Because the Chrome browser is fairly standards compliant?
What this whole thing is about is microsoft trying to use a fairly broken and proprietary version of htmtl, css and javascript to make it impossible for people to use the web without using internet explorer.

it is really a most stunning abuse of law. something like this:
"hello, i'm a private company and i misled my customers into buying a product telling them it was product A (a film) when it was actually product B (encrypted data). Because i totally screwed up and made it trivial for the customer to transform product B (what i sold them) into product A (what they wanted to buy) in the privacy of their own homes, can you make this a criminal offense punishable by up to 5 years in prison? KTHXBYE"

no, but it does tell you something about the lack of criminal energy involved. if i left my front door open and came back home to find someone in my flat, i doubt i'd alarm the police, provided i could get the trespasser to leave by myself and was pretty certain that nothing had been stolen or broken.

the thing is, most of us have a gut feeling that mckinnon doesn't really deserve more than a slap on the wrist and to be told to go to bed early without pudding. what he did should have been regarded as a schoolboy's prank---he guessed the passwords of some poorly sites to search for information about UFOS. he didn't actually damage anything and he didn't actually inconvenience anyone himself. had he deleted or modified information, then that would be a different thing. your line "free to do whatever they like" is a very poor strawman, as the fact is that he didn't damage anything.

that sounds to me rather like the corn laws, but being passed by a company and not the government.

fortunately, we are still able to switch it off and still get from A to B. the problem is complete when it becomes impractical to live and work without using the technology you mentioned. at that stage we will have a microsoft-style monopoly.

as long as i can still get from A to B using a book of maps or my memory, i won't need google to plot the route for me and accompany me along the way. it is however (almost) impossible to create and edit .doc files using a (non-existent) specification and a text editor.

what this really needs to make it horrible is for google to add a function to trace social undesirables and have their positions updated in real time in google maps. then the government could spin it to be the duty of every parent to use google maps to protect their children from drug addicts, murderers and the like.

i thought wave is foss. you don't stop developing foss just because you work for a company.

once more i will try to explain the difference. you have often said "apple should not be required to actively support hardware they do not make" to which i reply "i don't think they should either, that is not what we are arguing about here". but there is a world of difference between "not actively supporting hardware" and "actively and deliberately modifying a product so it won't run on that hardware". is this now clear?

what people here are accusing apple of is deliberately modifying osx so that it will no longer run on intel atom processors. if this is the case (and from what i can tell, there appears to be no conclusive evidence either way), then apple has done something that is not nice to the people who use osx on intel atom equipped computers. if this is not the case, then this is little more than bad luck.

because that's not what i'm complaining about, and i don't think anybody here is. it is a strawman to say that we are arguing that. we aren't. we are arguing that it is not nice of apple to intentionally modify their product so that it won't work on intel atom processors. we do not expect apple to ensure that their software works on intel atom processors, and i don't think anybody here as argued that, but i may be wrong.

of course, it is not clear that apple has deliberately changed osx binaries so they won't run on intel atom processors. they may just need some instructions which intel atom doesn't implement, in which case it would be quite nice for apple to say "btw, we changed our compiler to optimise for this and that, so intel atom no longer works." rather than leave others in the lurch. of course disassembling the update should soon reveal if this is true or not, or if apple has introduced some code to deliberately make sure os x doesn't run on intel atom processors.

And once again i must repeat myself. nobody is asking apple to do this. you are arguing a strawman here.

they aren't and they aren't. but that's not what this argument is about.

the problem is that it is a generally not nice thing to do. many people (i am not one of them, as i would not sully my hands with os x) have quite happily installed os x on intel atom powered products and (presumably) enjoyed using the hardware with this operating system. for apple to deliberately disable their systems from working is just not nice. what harm is it doing apple? why do they have to say to these (presumably hundreds if not thousands of people) "we don't like what you're doing so we're going to make sure you can't!"? it's just small-minded, egocentric behaviour which would get a reprimand if a child did it.

and although i repeat what hundreds have said before me, you are creating a strawman. nobody wants apple to support intel atom processors and there is no way their eula can tell me what to do with an osx cd in my own home. people who buy an osx cd and install the software on their own netbooks have done nothing morally wrong.

they are perfectly allowed to disable support for whatever they want to. i'm not saying (and i don't think anybody is saying) that apple doesn't have the right to do that. what others are saying is that it is morally questionable for apple to do so.

there is a reason why many here have mentioned intent. if apple has deliberately disabled os x from running on intel atom processors, then in the minds of most here we have a very different situation from the one if os x no longer ran on intel atom processors because of some technical reason.

in general we are arguing morals here, not law. legally i doubt that apple has done anything wrong. morally there is a very strong case to be made (which you have in no way countered) that apple has done something morally wrong.

one small point. C, java, python and ruby were all invented and named before people started googling for stuff.

this is something shuttleworth gets right with ubuntu development names. googling for 'karmic umts' is pretty likely to find results you want.

i think that's false, unless you cast pi as an int. :)

oh, citation needed big time. maybe this is true in some communist/fascist dictatorships, but i really do like to believe (and i see evidence that supports this belief) that in first-world countries with constitutions and functioning legal systems, the government is mostly a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Dear me, there are a lot of nay-sayers posting here. I wonder why? I can't inherently see something terrible about providing a large number of books for the world's poorest, yet the comments here would have me believe that it is hopeless, and everybody has an anecdote about why there's no point in even trying.

so why are the astroturfers out en force for this story?

anyway, i say good on the olpc project for trying to bring knowledge to the poor, the underprivileged, the down-trodden, the economically abused and the politically silenced. i still hope that we will someday look back on this project and think that it was a major stepping stone in our journey towards human rights, education and dignity for all.