I am a horrible slashdotter. I did not simply read the article, I read the fine legislation being proposed - as in the literal bill looking to get passed, as is linked in the article.

As best I can tell, the bill refers to SIM unlocking only, for the purposes of moving a cell phone between carriers. It does not appear to have any accommodations for rooting/jailbreaking/HardSPLing, except to say that you're not infringing if the purpose of rooting your phone is the means to the end of performing a baseband unlock.

My understanding of this bill is that it doesn't completely legitimize rooting/jailbreaking/HardSPLing in its own right. Resultantly, it doesn't address any of the reasons above, since none of the reasons you state have to do with an unlocked baseband.

Because not everyone felt this way.

I have no issue whatsoever with paying $10-$15 for a music album. I've got hundreds, and as a mobile DJ I even subscribe to more than one record pool. The catch here is that I get my music in bog standard, DRM-free, universally playable MP3 format, every time.

Where the Adobe software becomes an issue is that proprietary formats abound in their suite. PSD, AI, and PDF are somewhat-cross-compatible, but After Effects, Premiere, Flash, Audition, and Dreamweaver all have a more proprietary project file format that doesn't easily slip into an alternative. With plastic disc versions of software, I can be certain that I can always use the software, and I can always be guaranteed that my project files will open correctly and that the UI will remain the same until I decide to upgrade. By contrast, to use Facebook as an example, many people have been averse to the changes that have been made, particularly since Timeline.

Creative Cloud brings few benefits to users that couldn't have been made otherwise. Why not have feature-based DLC with separately downloadable installers. Image-Line does this with FL Studio, and it's worked out very well for them. Creative Cloud doesn't run in the browser, it makes it a requirement to store project files in "The Cloud". There's also no impetus for them to continue adding new features in due time; "continued access to your own data" is the killer feature for them.

I don't trust Creative Cloud. I don't trust Adobe independent of plastic discs.

Even these guys are getting somewhat skittish. The Mac Pro hasn't had a decent hardware upgrade in some time; PCs 1/3 the cost are outspeccing it now. Firewire still has a respectable niche in video and audio production, yet these all require Thunderbolt adapters now. Final Cut Pro X got the nickname "iMovie Pro" because, in a colossal oversight, it opened iMovie project files but *not* FCP projects (though admittedly they fixed this in a service pack).

Now Apple will continue to have a respectable share in this market if for no other reason that people simply don't take you as a "real" musician if you run Ableton or Protools or After Effects on a PC, despite all of these applications (and countless more) being cross platform. Depending on how Apple proceeds with OSX, this could go either way...unless production tasks become the domain of the iPad and the Lightning Hard Disk.

Best Buy and HP are on my I'll-take-my-chances list. When I've bought warranties from either, they've failed to honor them in more cases than not. HP spare parts are also sufficiently plentiful on eBay and I've gotten to the point where it's worth my time to just swap the parts out myself when something goes wrong. Admittedly this is atypical for the average consumer (especially when it comes to iPads and similar), but it's true at least for me.

Cell Phones? Asurion. Always. I've never once had an issue with them; I pay my deductible and I've got a phone on my desk at work the next day, every time. THEY are worth it. Yes I know that this is insurance, not a warranty per say, but ultimately it boils down to semantics insofaras Asurion gets paid monthly through my cell carrier while an extended warranty is a one-time payout.

Origin PC is another company whose warranties are worth it. Perfect support, perfect track record with replacement parts, and they've worked with me every time, without exception. I'll by warranties from them any day.

Tablets? Well, mine is a Toshiba, a company who's also been historically atrocious with warranty related matters in my experience, plus the tablet itself is sluggish and moderate-at-best quality so the device itself doesn't justify it for me personally.

This does raise a tangentially interesting business question though: we all know that businesses make a mint off the warranties and thus push them in order to bump the profit margin on the sale. I get that, and I'm okay with it. The problem then becomes the fact that it gives incentive for device prices to remain artificially high. If the device is higher priced, companies make more money. It justifies warranty purchases (also at higher prices) in many minds due to how expensive the device is. Now in the case of Apple specifically I'll give them a certain level of a pass on this because they are well known for honoring their warranties very consistently. Everyone else...not so much.

Thus, My original premise stands: certain companies make it worth it because there's actual peace-of-mind involved. I don't worry about my laptop breaking; I know Origin has my back without question. I don't worry about my screen cracking, Asurion will see to it that I can make calls tomorrow by noon. My Toshiba tablet? I have peace of mind knowing I'm screwed if the tablet breaks, as opposed to knowing I'm screwed if the tablet breaks AND I have a hundred bucks in Toshiba's hands whose only redeeming factor is having some underpaid foreign support representative informing me I'm screwed and my warranty doesn't cover whatever-happened-to-my-tablet.

Best. Response. Ever.

This is a ridiculous notion, to say that the US Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the RIAA and MPAA. ...they begrudgingly share ownership with Monsanto, BP, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, Comcast, and General Motors.

I disagree: I believe that, given time, it will end up being a Mac App Store Only model. I do agree, however, that it will be the last possible straw at a point when it won't matter anyway.

Adobe wants to sell everyone on a subscription model. You have to go so far out of your way to get Photoshop on a plastic disc anymore that you have to either buy it on Amazon or spend enough time digging on their site to find it that most who aren't bent on having their plastic disc will cave long before and just get The Cloud. Adobe can probably strong-arm Apple into allowing them to have a "stub installer" in the App Store that allows the subscription model to work despite the store. Alternatively, Adobe may do a dongle situation where all their software is free on the App Store, but use a USB license key to determine what you do and don't have. This is how Serato works - everyone here at Slashdot can download Scratch Live for free...but if you want to be able to use multiple decks or use timecode media, you're forking over $500-$3,000 for an official audio interface for the purpose. Apple may continue allowing "sideloading" of software, but soon enough it'll limit the ability of the Geniuses in the Apple store to troubleshoot software installations based on something akin to Samsung's "Modified" status on their Android phones. Once that happens, users will be weary of enabling sideloading. This will enable competitors to seep in. "Logic Pro is available in the Mac App Store and ProTools isn't? I'm not risking my shiny new hardware. Besides, Apple knows best..." Avid will be forced to either play ball and eat the 30% Apple Tax, or lose 35% of sales. Lather, rinse, repeat for everyone else. Those married to the software rather than the platforms *may* begrudgingly migrate to Windows or Linux, assuming Microsoft doesn't keep trying to shove their own App Market down everyone's throat and Linux manages to get a bit more commercial software developed for the platform. As an aside, I think Microsoft is less likely to disable sideloading as it's a 100% guaranteed way to lose their corporate market entirely AND give all the antitrust lawyers bulging dollar-sign eyes AND make things really messy in the EU. Apple has a minimal corporate market, no antitrust issues to deal with, and the EU seems to be fairly lenient on Apple thus far. Thus, Windows is less likely to prevent desktop software from being installed no matter how much they want to steer everyone toward Metro.

By time Apple removes the ability to sideload entirely, all the software developers will have figured out the least objectionable way to play ball with the App Store model, or replaced by developers who have done so. It will be like the removal of Rosetta - something mourned by a minority of hardcore users and given hoopla by tech journalists, but unable to gain sufficient traction with the mass market of users that even if every single person who complained about the removal of sideloading were to go to Windows, Apple would be able to easily consider it "acceptable losses" to watch 5% of users defect to Windows or Linux in light of the fact that they now are getting 30% of every $500 Ableton sale when they used to get nothing.

Yes, it did, but not by default. By default, Napster (and Kazaa and Limewire) shared the files you downloaded by default, and you had the option to share your 'my documents' if you wanted. Napster was a bit more secure, actually, because the only files it supported sharing were MP3, WAV, and WMA. Its successors allowed everything to be shared, and yes, I know people who have gotten themselves in hot water because they were sharing their documents folder and didn't exactly realize what that meant.

Wrong. I have an exchange account that is configured as a corporate e-mail, and a gmail account that's configured as a gmail account. Yes, it's meant to sync with Google Services, but why does it assume I want EVERYTHING by default? I'd be perfectly happy with not signing in to Google Services, but I can't do that if I want to be able to access my apps in the Play Store.

I am, in fact, aware that everything I don't install is considered a system app. I think that the inability to uninstall any preloaded apps is a bad thing, which is among the reasons I root the phone and get rid of the things the system says I can't get rid of, courtesy of ROM Toolbox. I do this as a first step with my phone, and like I said, I use multiple permissions-wrangling applications to take care of the rest. I don't have the foggiest idea what you're referring to when you're talking about "knee-jerking to everything [I] see on /." I guess that's what I get for responding to an AC though :/

TCM gave the slightly more succinct version, but I concur with him (or her) in your argument's lack of merit.

I'm perfectly fine with Google knowing my position and speed for the very reasons you specify - when and only when I'm using it to navigate. Throw a copy of LBE Security Master on your phone and set Google Maps to 'prompt' mode every time it wants your location. It's amazing how often it wants to know where I am, even when I'm not actively navigating.

I have a hosted Exchange account that I link to my phone. Why then, does Google automatically sync my calendar and contacts from Gmail when I sign into the phone? Literally the only three services of Google I want to use on my phone are Maps (on demand only), Search (only through Firefox), and the Play Store. Google seems to believe I want more than that; not the least of examples is the inclusion of Google+ as a "system" app or the automatic login to Google Sites and Youtube.

The flaw in your BitTorrent logic is this: The way BitTorrent works, if I'm sharing a Kubuntu Whacky Wombat ISO, then yes, I will be expected to upload as I download...but solely for THAT ISO. I assure you that there would be significantly fewer BT users if the protocol required sharing your My Documents directory despite the ISO living on a different hard disk entirely. The latter is what Google and Facebook both do, and it's why people like myself feel the need to use tools like LBE, Permission Denied, Pdroid, and Droidwall.

It's a bit of an obtuse way of doing things, but I use LBE Security Master, Droidwall and Permission Denied altogether. I have each blocking the internet access of the other two, so odds are pretty bad that any information is getting out the front door as a result. From there, it's just a matter of using each of them to deny what's necessary. LBE is great because it's simple, but it's limited to contacts, internet, SMS, and GPS data. While that's the core set of data, Permission Denied lets you pull access for basically every API, including camera and access to onboard accounts.

It's sad that my Linux-based phone requires more security tools than my Windows laptop, but eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom :/

You don't have to do legit system damage to be annoying. I've had plenty of users who have gotten infections consisting of a single executable in a temp folder that managed to somehow get itself to start up often enough to make a mess of people's systems. It helps prevent PERSISTENT damage that requires post-infection tools like Combofix or gMER, but it is still enough to make users upset and think that Super Duper Antivirus 2015 Pro has found kiddiepr0ndownloader.trojan and that they need to pay $29.95 using a Greenpak card in order to get rid of it.

Seriously, let 'em boot off a CD, do their internetness, and let it all go away after reboot. If you have guests that are sufficiently malicious as to scrub through your hard disk from a live Linux environment, you've got plenty of other issues right behind it. If you're simply looking to fix stupid, then grab a Live CD boot off it, and let it exist that way. Unless there's a particular need, don't complicate things.

The first "this" in the prior post is supposed to be this link:
http://www.businessballs.com/airtrafficcontrollersfunnyquotes.htm

Next time, I shall use the 'preview' button to actually preview.

None of them are actually funny, at least in print. Nearly all involve passengers attempting to say "I have a bomb" in a humorous manner in some capacity. Now I'd love to see the TSA abolished as much as the next Slashdotter, but I for one don't find bomb jokes funny in the context of an airport.

Now, if you want to read something regarding airlines that are actually funny, might I recommend either this or this, or this.

Two pieces of fairness here...

1.) the PS3 had 256MBytes of RAM on its release.
2.) like every other console, it can get away with having lower specs than a general purpose PC - it doesn't have to run an operating system in the same sense that a desktop does; in broad terms it's closer to ESXi and its requirements than Win7/OSX/Ubuntu in its, so far more of that RAM can go to the game itself.

Bonus: Even if we postulate that the OS takes a gig of RAM itself, 7GB is roughly 1/3 of a single layer Blu-Ray disc. I know that HD textures can eat up graphics RAM pretty quickly, but is it really limiting to have 1/3 of a game in RAM at a time? Let's face it, console game creation has always involved working within some incredibly tight limits...even Crysis 3 doesn't require that amount of RAM to play. If 7GB of RAM and streaming the rest from an internal hard disk is a constraint, then I'd be forced to assume that the people writing games cut their teeth on ActiveX controls...