stevewhitemd

This is what happens when people want more government -- they get more government...

Daniel correctly points out that Samsung has borrowed a lot (by which we mean, nearly all) of its inspiration for its products from Apple. We have a fair idea what Samsung phones would be if the iPhone had not come along, for example. The idea could be extended back forty years as a way of demonstrating how Apple, many times small in the market, sometimes "beleaguered" and troubled, has influenced what computers, printers, phones, and music players should be. What if there had been no Apple ][? No Macintosh? No Laserwriter? No Mac OS? No ImageWriter? More recently, what if there had been no iPod, no Mac OS X? Care to venture what a Microsoft operating system would look like if Mac OS, and then OS X, hadn't come along? Anyone think that Microsoft would have gotten the idea of a GUI? Would Microsoft, or Texas Instruments, or other giants of the day have figured out how to put a computer into a laser printer (a computer more powerful than what anyone had on their desktop at that time), integrate into a distant computer's operating system, and sell it? Who would have pushed object-oriented programming to the front of the industry and given that industry a market for such wares? We all know what the music players of 1999 looked like with their idiot Timex-watch style key buttons, design and market limitations, and unreliable playing of music. Who other than Apple would have figured out the click-wheel, popularized it, dropped onto a little box with a frigging MINI HARD DRIVE inside to store thousands of songs, and gotten the music industry (that band of robber-baron scum) to go along? Name a company, I'll wait. Take Apple out of the history from 1976 on. What does the world look like today?

Apple favors their own applications? Whoa, careful Mr. Volach, you almost knocked me over with that feather!

"...players are penalized by having their login details suspended, sometimes for over a century."

I wouldn't worry, the game isn't going to be around that long...

I frequently fly; I'm an amateur photographer and sometimes have my camera gear with me, as well as a MacBook and an iPad. All of this gear is never checked, no matter what the airline demands. If they refuse to let me board, so be it. There is nowhere I have to be that is so urgent that I'll let my gear be checked and then stolen, which it will be. And no matter what a gate agent promises about security and compensation, the airlines will not honor such promises. The gate agent's job is to get you on the plane, not speak for the airline.

Some tips if you are in this situation --

-- tell the gate agent that you have lithium batteries in your gear. Lots of them and they aren't removable (or if they are, you have many of them, like my dozen camera batteries). Lithium batteries can't go into checked luggage. Now your gear and bag are back with you.

-- tell the gate agent that you have medication in the bag (don't lie about this, they may ask to see it). Their rules won't allow them to separate you from your medications. Now your bag is back with you.

-- consolidate your tech gear into the one under-seat bag you that you are allowed. Sucks to do at the gate but one should never, ever put tech into a checked bag. As long as that bag fits under the seat you're good.

Never, ever check a bag containing your tech gear.

Mr. Dilger's article almost makes me feel sorry for Intel. Almost. What's interesting about Intel isn't that they failed to recognize the corner they'd painted themselves into with the x86 architecture -- it's that they DID recognize, and tried to solve it, and failed. They tried to get into other chip fabrications like broadband, and failed. They tried IA-64, and failed. They tried the Atom, and failed. For broadband and Atom it became clear to the industry that Intel's solution wasn't good enough, but for IA-64 and Itanium Intel fell into the classic trap of having a superior product that others wouldn't invest in to use. Microsoft wasn't going for it and neither were the other industry leaders. You'd think that someone at Intel would learn from all this failure -- Apple (well, really, Jobs, and to a fair extent Cook and Ive) certainly learned from failure, which is why we got the iMac, iPod, iPhone, Mac OS X, etc. Failure, if you survive it, is a good teacher. What has Intel learned? Darned if I know.

To Nicholfd -- which fan at Amazon? I have two of the current (old) Express 4M2, and the fan on one of them definitely needs to go. A pointer would be great.