So, the tax is also on iPods, even the nano, Shuffle and classic. Can someone explain how you use one of those devices to pirate music? I know how to do it on any Windows PC, but last time I checked there was no Kazaa, LimeWire, Bittorrent or for that matter any 3rd party apps whatsoever on those iPods.

"It pisses me off to hell that schools are pushing the iPad when it lacks the one thing that made tablets a killer tool for education: a stylus."

I couldn't disagree more. I can type far faster on a keyboard and even a virtual keyboard than I can write. Better, my notes can be better organized, spell checked, etc...

The use of a stylus is specifically what made me *not* get a tablet before the iPad. Also, you know what's faster than even typing on a keyboard for me? Simply recording the audio.

But input aside, the iPad's ability to play audio, video, and have interactivity make it a great tool for education. My iPad has a bunch of manuals on it, along with how-to videos and so forth.

I had no interest in ever getting an iPad until I used it and realized how useful it was. It wasn't the marketing or anything else. I would say 75% of the people I know who got one had the same reaction before they actually started using one.

This isn't just to be an Apple fanboy. I thoroughly expect Android based tablets to become very popular as well as Windows based ones. The one thing Apple did do right with the iPad was to get it first to market, not as a Tablet PC, but as a consumption-priority device that serves its purpose as an auxiliary computer using recent advances in mobile tech.

@Jaime2 "If you bought all of Apple's stock, it would be 30 years (once again, based on history) before you made your $234 billion dollars in profit."

It's (as of Friday's close) just under 22 years. However, that's multiplying how much they've made over the past year and multiplying it by 22. In other words that assumes growth flatlines. That in of itself would be misleading because during the past 12 months included in the PE, there's been a near doubling of growth YOY. If you look at Price to Earnings Growth, you'll see a much different number.

"If a company has a device that doesn't support tethering, why would you buy their products if you want to tether it?"

Because almost everything else about the iPhone outweighs this one issue.

"If a network does not support tethering for your particular device, why would you join them if you one day hoped to tether?"

Not that I have a choice in the US with the iPhone, but if I did I would still have AT&T because:
1) Roll over minutes and in-network calling have resulted in a cheaper plan (than what I had with Verizon).
2) Customer service is much better (IMHO).
3) You can do voice and data at the same time.
4) GSM makes it easy to use my phone internationally (and cheaply with rented GSM SIMS)
5) Faster data speeds (in my geographic areas).
6) Dropped calls etc... hasn't been an issue for me (again in my geographic areas).
7) Free connectivity at AT&T hotspots, like Starbucks.

"Stop hoping for half-arsed solutions, trying to "jailbreak" your phone to do that, etc. "

There is no "try" there is only "do", and it's not half-assed. I have no problems with jailbreaking iPhones. It's always resulted in an iPhone that just worked better and enabled more features and functionality, including tethering and tether-sharing. I see no reason to ever stop, unless Apple eventually enables all the reasons why I jailbreak.

"And, besides, phone tethering is old-hat anyway. It costs literally a few pounds / dollars to connect a PC to a 3G always-on connection on a decent tariff in the country of your choice."

Ya...I'm not likely to change countries based solely on the price of 3G cards/dongles. Here in the US, with any carrier, 3G laptop service sucks on a price:utility ratio.

Damn. I just bought a copy of this movie. I had never heard of it until the parodies, but watching them made the original seem like it would be interesting. Now I feel guilty paying for it instead of pirating.

" In 2000, DOD had fewer than 50 unmanned aircraft in its inventory; as of October 2009, this number had grown to more than 6,800."

Did I just read that correctly? Are they saying that between 2000 and 2009, more unmanned aircraft were built for the US military than all of the F-14s, F-16s, F-18s and F-22s ever built *combined*?

I never buy insurance for my iPhones because I know that I'm going to want to upgrade them each year. It never occured to me to smash and replace. I wouldn't want to do that though. On the other hand, sell me a policy where each year I get to send in my old iPhone and get a new one and I'd be all over that. The insurer could then sell my old iPhone or use it to replace someone with cheaper insurance who didn't buy the upgrade option.

"Jail-breaking facilitates piracy" Well it's a step that one must take before being able to pirate an iPhone app. Of course buying an iPhone is a prior and more critical step. Jailbreaking also facilitates the selling of 3rd party apps through an additional store (Cydia). I've jailbroken. I've pirated apps. I've never not then purchased an app that I ended up liking/using. In a couple of cases I've purchased the app, and then pirated it so that I could modify the plist file and customize the app to my liking. It's *very* easy for developers to check if the app is pirated and then disable it. The piracy of apps is a hole that could be easily plugged without closing off jailbreaking. Many developers are starting to do this, but I'm also seeing where developers are putting nag messages in for pirated copies of apps, or figuring that the piracy is ok since they're then seeing people pay for add-ons to the app. My guess is that Apple, AT&T, and developers are all better of with allowing jailbreaking to occur.

"fine and useful English"
I think the word you're looking for is "cromulent".

Saying it has "no value" is like saying a paid membership to a mirror of Wikipedia has no value. Your examples don't show any added value. "Imagine, you download a single you like and it already contains Amazon links to buy the full album." Like iTunes and any other software (and even hardware) not only can do, but do so effectively now using the meta data? "Or it lets you know when the band's next release comes out." Again, totally doable now. There are tons of apps (free) that allow you to get all kinds of information, or make purchases based on the meta information in the song file. Heck, Shazam does all these bells and whistles just by listening to a few seconds. Don't introduce a new file format unless it truly provides value. In this case it doesn't do anything except for the people who "created" it.

AT&T and Verizon become the main bandwidth providers. T-Mobile and Sprint will cease exist on their own. Google provides services as Google does Anything Google can monetize via ads is something Google goes after. This doesn't make Google a direct competitor to Apple or any other handset maker as long as the handset maker adopts Android or at least Google services. The iPhone has Google Maps, YouTube and Google Search by default. Google can provide other apps on this platform and with Admob, provide advertising services to 3rd party apps. The X million iPhones that have been sold to date have added to Google's bottom line just as much as each Android that has been sold. Google's desire to develop Android was solely to get a platform out to manufacturers that would fully adopt Google services. From Google's perspective, they're saying, "the iPhone is great, RIM is ok, but what happens if WinMo gets most of the other handset manufactures?"

Actually the steps are: 1) Admit that you're an idiot for enabling SSH and not changing the default password. 2) Flash the firmware. 3) Re-Jailbreak. 4) Either don't enable SSH or do change the default password. 5) Remember that you're an idiot.

I can't believe how many people aren't listening to established experts on this. Just a guess Kevin, but you're not a doctor are you? Have you gone to medical school? You've got an irresponsible aunt who somehow has been employed as a nurse and is acting very wrong in both not getting a flu shot and telling others as well. Forget about your aunt and her anecdotal stories that fly in the face of people with extensive research and real credibility in the fields that apply to the flu and vaccines. "One would think that constant vaccine's, medications, antibiotics, etc just make the immune system lazy." Why do you even have an opinion on this if you don't even know the very fundamental basics of what a vaccine is or how it works? Read just one article that discusses how a vaccine works...just one...go to Wikipedia, or read one of those silly "How Vaccines Work" for dummies pamphlets at a pharmacy. You can read those in like 10 seconds, and while it may not save your life, it will at least stop you from writing things like you wrote.

Sigh...and condoms wouldn't have prevented 9/11. Here's the thing, entering a password for a specific WiFi network is usually a one time event, so mistyping it really not a big deal. Meanwhile, you might want to set up a temp with access, but there's no way of doing that without someone with even modest Mac knowledge or access to Google from discovering the password within 10 seconds. Now maybe keeping the password hidden still wouldn't provide 100% protection against some expert hacker working as a temp from getting the wireless password, but it would provide at least some reasonable level of protection.

I'm so disappointed as I was hoping to find an answer here. I've been wondering about the whole entering the password twice for Microsoft on a wireless network for years now. I have a Mac, and every time a Windows user asks me to repeat the password, I ask them why...they tell me they need to enter it twice, so I ask *why*. Nobody has ever offered me an answer. That would drive me friggin nuts as a Windows user...not just doing it, but knowing there was no valid reason as to why. Now email addresses on online forms are a different story, they're just trying to make sure you did it correctly by making sure the addresses match. For the wireless network login this makes no sense because if you did get it wrong, then no loss, just that's when you'd have to enter it the second time. I think someone really screwed up at Microsoft on this, but why was it left this way after numerous patches? Apple does allow you to hide or reveal your password for the wireless network, which is funny because this option is a bit more of a risk than just letting you see your password while entering it. By allowing you to reveal the password after it's been entered, they're allowing anyone to walk up to a Mac that's connected and see the wireless password when the user is away.