Ironically, out of two mac laptops of differing model that I've had in my home, neither has ever had a webcam indicator on for anything but, well, the webcam being on. Their predecessors with the external camera did, however, periodically give the indicator a green 'on' light without any obvious client software, but for those times, I either closed the iris or unplugged the silly thing... I'm still kind of floored that it doesn't seem like anybody actually checked for the issue on Apple's site (admittedly, they don't like telling the world that their products aren't perfect) or searching on the internet for similar problems on similar models...

I saw video purporting to be from the school's sysadmin, where he states that it goes into theft mode when it's connected to a non-school network. I've also seen claims from students that it would also happen on the school network, and if they complained or asked about it, they'd get a loaner replacement and told that the problem couldn't be verified on the turned-in laptop...

Exactly right. It's just a shame that nobody remembers the 9th Amendment, which is the only reason Madison and about half of the rest of the framers were even willing to write a Bill of Rights in the first place...

the price tag for iraq is currently about a trillion, with estimates of about 2 trillion of future costs (disability checks, therapy, rehabilitation, etc.) still to be paid out. I'm not sure whether or not that's a highball estimate, projected inflationary, whatever, but it is what it is.

I'm not currently up on afghanistan's bill, but figure i'll be back to that hole before too much longer, and will get an idea there. Not that any estimate is really going to be all that accurate right now, with the upsizing of the war and all the baggage that goes with it. I don't see much chance of getting accountability right there if we can't get it right here, also.

While I can certainly see both points, I do have to find a bit of irony in your sig in that your argument suggests that the only way to retain a modicum of security and essential liberty (freedom from wrongful imprisonment is considered by most to be a rather essential liberty) is to deny others those very things...

not flamebaiting, just noticed an incongruity in your logic. </offtopic>

I know a few high school dropouts who could have handled it better, so please don't insult them...

this strongly implies in some of the text (iirc, control up to 50 ARD or VNC desktops, blah, blah, words...) strongly implies that there is a pretty good amount of codebase shared between ARD and VNC, at least for the remote desktop work. IOW, ARD isn't completely, uniquely apple. but still a good candidate for polishing to the proverbial "blinding shine."

All I know is, I got an iPhone a couple of months ago, and had to sign up for the $35/mo unlimited data plan, and haven't seen any billing higher than the $35 for data access. haven't pushed more than a few tens of megs of data via 3g, though...

yeah, i mean, this isn't like hd-dvd vs. blu-ray...

and mine is this... think about it, every /.er that fired up the test pulled 100-ish tweets simultaneously for the sparkling dot bling on the test page. that would make the site a slashdot-effect magnifier with a factor of about 100...
then again, how many slashdotters actually RTFA?

I think you should bear in mind that

• James Madison, the "Father of the Bill of Rights", was vehemently anti Bill of Rights. The reason for that was that he did not want future generations to believe that the Bill of Rights was an enumeration of the rights and liberties of individuals and their home states, as opposed to the Constitution being a firm boundary of the powers of the Federal Government. He conceded after over a year, and he had the 9th Amendment in mind before any of the other proposed Amendments. To give you an idea of how well that worked for us, when Robert Bork was asked in confirmation hearings to place him on the Supreme Court, he referred to the 9th Amendment as an "ink blot on the Constitution." Thankfully, he did not get confirmed to the Court, but most Justices are averse to referencing Amendment 9 in their findings anyway. Sorry, I'm digressing...
• The patent and copyright provisions originally in the Constitution granted an exclusive monopoly on distribution for 17 years from the time the patent was granted, after which, the work in question fell into the public domain. The trade off for the creator was almost two decades of head start, in exchange for protection from other people attempting to derive a profit immediately from said creator's work. Compare and contrast with current American copyright law, DMCA, etc.

Long and short, the current copyright and patent systems are at best the perverted and distorted afterbirth of what Madison wrote in the first place, and trying to pretend that Madison was in favor of writing the Bill of Rights in the first place is patently false.