You clearly didn't RTFA. The rep didn't "suggest" a product. They took control of the customer's PC remotely, claimed they were using a Symantec tool, then downloaded a copy of software by Malwarebytes, installed it on the customer's system, and used it to clean an infection.

So the support techs lied to a customer and installed unauthorized software on their machine that they CLAIMED was a symantec product.

And where do you store your files?

"before I open the box" implies that the box has not been open...very strongly. Which implies that it has not been installed on any other computer...very strongly. If the support techs had half a brain, they would have realized that the GP wanted to know if his copy of windows XP home would run on an AMD64 processor.

To the GP, assuming that you aren't lying through your teeth (which seems likely, considering that you knew what an AMD64 processor was and managed to download and install the proper version of linux yet couldn't figure out which version of XP would work on your machine) next time try pretending that you picked it up from the store next time, since if you have an unopened copy of windows XP in a box with a valid license, it makes no difference who the fuck picked it up from the store. Leave out unnecessary details and you might get somewhere next time

But included with the software is a free recovery tool which boots from CD to clean up an infested system which the support tech was obliged to tell the customer about. Instead, the tech told the customer that their only option was a session with an expert consultant that probably would have been ineffective.

Actually, the front line support tech did escalate the issue, and the second support person is the one which recommended the expert consulting service. In addition, there is a tool free for owners of the antivirus software which can be downloaded from norton's website and boots from CD.

When the customer contacted symantec later to complain, they confirmed that this was the appropriate course of action to take.

Seems like games are the one area where there would not be much money to be gained from support either. It's not like you can sell a support contract for a game to a large company, a game tends to require much less support than most software that could be used by a business, for example. At most there will be trouble with installation or possibly crashes. I don't see how it's plausible to charge for patches since they'll be governed under the same open source license as the game, the only way to charge for one of these things is to charge an online subscription fee for multiplayer for use of the servers. Games that don't include that kind of function wont' be able to get money for the work put in. While this doesn't matter to some, the entire industry can't work this way. Unlike infrastructure software like Operating Systems, server software and even to a lesser extent web browsers and office suites, game companies can't live on support alone.

I think GP was trying to say that the Open Document Formats (not microsofts "Open" standard) has been open for years, but because of MS marketing bullshit it's difficult to ever tell which set of formats we're talking about.

How compliant do they have to be with which standards? I don't think there's a single browser that is 100% compliant with any of the current standards, CSS2 comes to mind. Portions of all of the standards are implemented, but no browser is wholly standards compliant. Most just aren't as badly incompliant as IE.

Yeah, I don't think we'd ever see that either, for more reasons than one. I feel like any browser for the iPhone/iPod that attempted to include its own rendering engine would probably just be a beast of a download, the benefit of making other apps use safari on the backend is all browsers on the device can use a single shared library that is already preinstalled. Ultimately, I don't see much need for another browser on the iPhone. Safari is plenty good enough for most uses that aren't webapps and games, and webapp authors that want their users to have iPhone support can develop an app that hooks into their webservice, like Amazon and Evernote have done.

I've seen a lot of apps get approved that were originally denied after a name change and some basic tweaks, I think it's a shame that developers get rejected and just give up. We'd probably be seeing some pretty cool apps if the devs would just go through the process.

Personally I love the app store, I'm not maligning it, just apparently slightly misinformed. I've heard of apps that have differentiated that got blocked by apple due to claims that they "duplicate functionality" (a certain email program comes to mind that I can't seem to remember the name of), so I just assumed that all the parrot talk was true, that even if there was differentiation it could get blocked. For all the reasons you mentioned, firefox won't get approved, but I doubt we'll ever see them approve a browser that doesn't use safari on the backend, whether it differentiates in features or not.

On the first point, if any version of firefox were to be ported to iPhone it would be Fennec, and I haven't seen if they plan to release extensions for it or not, even if they do, it shouldn't be difficult to disable extensions for that specific port of the browser.

You're right on the second point, I forgot about that, but in any case, apple has still said multiple times that applications which duplicate functionality included with the iPhone will not be allowed on the app store: that means any browser that doesn't just embed Safari's rendering engine, any media player replacement for iTunes, etc. Although if Apple changed its mind about that restriction, yours would still stand.

Which is why a PC and a phone are two different things. If Apple had to approve every application that you could run on your macbook people would be up in arms too.

and if nobody accidentally messed with the "normal" template.

Firefox won't be authorized because they don't want apps on the phone that duplicate functionality. Not that I think this is necessarily a bad thing, choice is good, but you can always choose a phone that will allow Firefox (fennec?) over the iPhone. If you get an iPhone, you know what you're in for: a closed platform with apps selected by Apple for their reliability. If you want to run unauthorized software you can jailbreak, of course, but the main point is this: Apple has chosen a business model that works for them and their target market. A closed platform with a carefully selected slew of applications to ensure that the device retains its simplicity and reliability. Anything that compromises either is bad for Apple's target market.