Hmm. Making money has nothing to do with ethics.

HOW you make money has to do with ethics, don't confuse the two.

This is completely unethical no matter how you slice it.

Basically they got into a room together and said "hey let's charge them to apply the automatic update."
"But it's automatic! People will complain and not buy"
"Yeah but we'll get the ones who don't know it's automatic. They'll never know!"

So grandma goes in to buy her grandkid a PS3. She thinks oh! This is an extra special PS3, they did this firmware thing to it, so my grandkid won't have to. How nice of them!

Yeah, totally ethical. Riiight.

Another fantastic point.

God it makes me sick how many sleezy businesses there are out there preying on consumers.

Igorance is bliss I guess? What's unethical is everything.

If I bring in MY PS3 and ask them to firmware upgrade it then it's my bad for being lazy or ignorant.

If I buy a PS3 and they add on $30bucks to every PS3 and consumers who don't have ANY KNOWLEDGE of how the PS3 updates work buy it thinking it's required, then they are unethical sleezbags. It's deception designed to prey on less tech savvy consumers and they should be kicked in the nuts for doing it.

How hard is this to understand?

The problem with the iPhone for business is that for some strange reason they either 1) don't understand how business professionals work or 2) take shortcuts with software design and leave out important features.

- Like snoozable alarms for calendar alerts
- Or clickable numbers/links in calendar items (this was missing for ages)

There's a bunch of things I can't think of off the top of my head that make the phone less appealing for business users, all things that they should be able to easily implement in software.

The changes to Mail were welcome however, including shared inbox. Now if we just had a contact list I could immediately type letters into I'd be happy.

I'd think they've already thought about this and realize that, believe it or not, we have the technology to polarize and filter transparent materials... so I don't think this will be the kind of problem you think it is.

In addition if you read the story they are talking about "active" materials that can change transparency based on the "push of a button". Such materials exist today.

So no, glare and cabin temperatures won't be a problem. There are many materials, most notably those used in the better UV protectant window films, that significantly reduce UV penetration without a commensurate decrease in visible light, and these would also allow for transparency without significant increases in temperature.

I just hope to live to see and fly in planes such as this if they ever "see the light of day".

One could argue that you are speeding at ANY speed. Speeding generally means the legal limit, not necessarily the only safe speed. For example in poor weather conditions you can be cited for doing the speed limit if it is unsafe.

In addition by buying the pass and being "authorized" (not given permission) you are no longer speeding but rather doing the speed you are authorized for which is deemed to be safe for the conditions and the vehicle you are driving.

This speed would only be allowed on certain roads as well, roads where that speed was deemed safe.

How exactly does that apply to the discussion of whether or not the beetles made millions of dollars SELLING their music and not giving it away free? The discussion wasn't about the merits of current law.

You obviously need new friends with better enunciation...

When using google voice enabled apps linked to searches (not the google transcription stuff which does no searching) they are amazingly accurate. So I don't think you can fairly compare the two. Google has a very powerful set of associative algorithms running to improve the accuracy of these types of voice enabled commands and searches.

No offense, but I'd think it is pretty obvious that this is a proof-of-concept and any interpretation that this is in any way billed as "ready for prime time" shows a complete lack of understanding of the real accomplishment here. It also devalues what's been accomplished.

This is a MAJOR accomplishment. Like many other early stage technologies it might not be practical but will most certainly pave the way for very practical applications. You do realize that this essentially represents free energy for both powering AND maneuvering space craft, right? About the only thing you'd need with a spacecraft built using this kind of technology is thrusting mass for maneuvering in gravity wells and/or takeoff/landing from the surface of a body (looking much further out).

Certainly a number of overall technologies will need to come together for this to be applicable for anything beyond use for satellite positioning. The use of this for a space faring craft will be faced with a laundry list of other techology hurdles, such as:

1. Mass/scale engineering. What would it take to build a sail large enough to provide inertia but can remain rigid enough to actually move a spacecraft module.
2. What are the affects of long term solar radiation on the solar/lcd panels? Will they survive the hard radiation of the "solar winds" long enough to make travel worthwhile?

Another question concerns the math around the acceleration of the object. I don't have a clue myself (but it would be interesting to look into). Remembering that the solar radiation used by the sails is travelling at the speed of light we need to calculate the acceleration of the body over time. I think we'll find that even though acceleration is slow it is also continuous, so you can reach EXTREMELY high speeds over time. Here's a quote I pulled from http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/solar_sailing/facts.html:

"The real advantage of solar sailing is that, unlike a chemical rocket that applies a lot of thrust for a very short time, sunlight hitting the sail applies thrust continuously. In 100 days, a sail-propelled craft could reach 14,000 kilometers per hour. In just three years, a solar sail could reach over 150,000 miles per hour. At that speed, you could reach Pluto in less than five years."

Pretty awesome stuff.

Yes they are sold out. The stock in stores is just for exchanges... and while I was in the store for my 60 min period I saw hmm 4-5 exchanges (could have been others I missed) all for iPhone 4s.

Oh it's illegal here too, trust me. The fact that they are doing it is mind boggling. I can't say if it's happening in other stores but it sure happened in this one.

I really should have recorded the conversation and kept the phone, then posted the conversation online.

As for those saying just return it and buy something else... well maybe once something else comparable is released... but right now, barring the antenna issue (and prox issues which I'm sure can be fixed with firmware) I love the phone. Now if it would just WORK as a phone where I live I'd be happy.

I'm still off the Apple bandwagon big time. No more Apple products for me unless they make up for this behavior in a big way.

First off Apple is making it very difficult to return phones, and I can assure you there are LOTS of people in the Apple stores trying to get the phones fixed and threatening to return them.

How about this interesting story...

I was in the Apple store in the "Domain" in Austin, tx. I went in for a phone exchange because I was instructed to do so by Apple tech support on the "chance" that it would fix my drop call problems (and proximity sensor issues). I had 2 case numbers and Apple made the appointment for the visit themselves.

Well, I get there and spend 60 minutes, 15 minutes waiting for help (past my appt time) and 45 minutes talking to the support person while he went to the back 3 times to "get my replacement phone" only to come back out and say "I just want to make sure you understand that after you exchange your phone you cannot ever return it for a refund" and then being unable to show me anything in writing that states that I would lose my contractual rights to a refund if the phone is exchanges in an attempted repair.

That's right, Apple stores are attempting to decieve customers that they cannot return phones if they are exchanged for repair during their 30 day period. They cannot show anything in writing to this affect (because nothing in writing exists) and when pressured they will simply say "oh I know how the system works and it is simply impossible to return an exchanged phone because the serial numbers change". How interesting. But they cannot explain how that can be possible when the exchange work order shows both the original phones serial and the exchange phones serial"

So those of you that claim that no one wants to return their phones should walk into an Apple store and see what they are doing to keep people from doing so. The intimidation (with a pleasant voice) tactics used to stop customers from doing so (since most customers will try an exchange at least once before refunding) is despicable and probably illegal.

Huh? Nice made up story.

Certainly people bought the phone for business. It's just ridiculous to imply otherwise. I know tons of people who bought the iPhone as a Blackberry replacement, and tons more who couldn't because their company did not support the iPhone (or allow it's use) at the time.

So nice attempt to somehow discredit RIMs statement. A statement that is very well said and puts Apple in a pretty shitty light, especially when you consider how badly Job's wants the corporate business. And they made acquiring that business SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult for themselves with both the iPhone 4 itself and the way they have handled it's problems.

Of course what they don't tell you, or probably don't know, is how many calls are ended intentionally because you are unintelligible to the person on the other end of the line. I've had a bunch of calls where I've had to hang up and call back on a land line because the person could not understand me when I "accidentally" rested my skin against the black line.

Yeah, Steve is beyond lying for personal and professional gain.

I mean he came clean about the antenna problem right from the start when he said "you are holding it wrong" and "there's no problem, this is being blown all out of proportion".

Or when he stated so truthfully that the problem was with the ATT algorithm for calculating bars - because he needed us to see the truth - that inaccurate bars are the cause of dropped calls... oops!

Yeah, Stevie boy is beyond such base things like lying. Of course it's amazing what truth means when you are living in a self made fantasy world where, by the definition of your reality, everyone other than yourself are all ignorant peasants and therefore wrong by definition.