That was rather my point. Has Apple charged for ANY of the iPod Touch updates? If they have, I'm not aware of it.

<quote><p>I don't have any problem running 10+ apps simultaneously on my Palm Pre. Perhaps some companies besides Apple can do things right! But that's unpossible!</p></quote>

You must have an amazing Palm Pre to not get the "No additional cards can be opened at this time" error message that pops up when I try to get the 7th or 8th card open. The Palm Pre is the best illustration yet for why blind, pre-emptive multitasking in a phone OS is a bad idea.

<quote><p>They are. Major software upgrades for the iPad are probably not going to be free (except maybe the first one).</p></quote>

Exactly like they did for all the iPhone updates that have worked on all the original iPhones.

Unlike me, who can't even edit the quote tags correctly. - Tim

<quote><p>Sounds like every geeks wet dream. And yet I can't help but think to myself ... this is a <i>telephone</i>. This is device whose primary purpose is to facilitate <i>verbal communication</i>.</p></quote>

You must be new here. - Tim

They only lean toward MAC/IP topologies in BPL. In lower-bandwidth scenarios (metering) they go a variety of ways, largely because extended distances mean signals from a given node won't be visible across the entire network, which forces a repeater mechanism of some kind. It gets complex fairly quickly, especially in commercial systems, where huge banks of fluorescent lights create some unpredictable behavior.

Making things worse are the customers who have heard about BPL and say, "Why can't you just replace all these devices with something that does broadband and greater throughput?"

Actually, the way they do this is using an address layer like most any other protocol. A bunch of different topologies exist, but generally speaking, each monitored node will be uniquely addressable with a value embedded in the data frames rather than just by frequency. Multiple frequencies are used to dynamically adjust to the presence of various types of noise.

How about a jar full of mosquitoes instead? - Tim

People said the same thing when they launched the Zune. Go figure. - Tim

Another freebie:

PC [Hodgman] sitting in his king chair, surrounded by windows that have no apparent walls holding them up. Mac [Long] walks up.

Mac: What's up PC?

PC: Enjoying life without walls. I'm still the king, and all my subjects are PCs.

(Strangers come up behind PC, carry off some of his stuff)

PC: Hey! These guys are stealing all my stuff! (disgustedly sitting back down) Maybe going without walls was a bad idea.

Mac: Could be, but I have to ask. If you don't want walls, why do you have Windows?

PC: (long pause) I banish you... again.

Are you sure? What is '1' base 0?