If you honestly believe this I feel sorry for the people around you. Companies have plenty of moral or "ethical" obligations and people of the world are the ones that demand and makes those things happen. The more we lock things up the slower our social and technical evolution will take which might be to broad a topic for this discussion I apologize.

Accepting things simply because that's the way it is was a lesson for children not adults and not a very good one if you ask me.

This is my motto. Accept the world the way it is, but envision it the way you would like it to be and try and maintain a positive model so others will want to follow.

Your attitude is some what disappointing. Thanks for your comments though.

I actually got into a debate over something similar. We were going over a technical report and a discussion came up on the individual that was writing the report for the consumers and the engineers. The report was suppose to be on a Minivan that had many of the safety features removed to maximize profit and obviously lower costs. Any way, what came into question was who do you think your "loyalty" belongs to, the options were your Company, Consumers, or Yourself. Your loyalty meaning do you explain the actual technical details of your device, or do you skew these facts. Most people morally, or either out of fear of public criticism said Consumers. This is ideally a good choice if said person has bad morals, since this implies you use an external moral compass, but on a personal level I usually try and place myself on a high set of standards because I believe that if I am a good example I can teach others to do the same. This is an important topic. Needless to say I was the one to argue that you put Yourself first...if a person does pick oneself and it is obvious they are fighting for moral "goodness" than this person to me has a genuine desire for the world to be that way. Better. On the other hand this could mean a completely sinister selfish person which is what most people were told from there mothers and fathers when they were growing up and I am sure is the reason why they answered Consumers.

Believe it or not the world isn't about money as much as you would like to believe. If your circle is obsessed in this way I encourage you to reach out in a completely strong way especially this season and help some one.

This brings another thought to mind and I will stop there before I completely throw this topic off its original course. If I didn't already.

Visit this website : http://www.kiva.org/

Continuing off topic...

Even for children I believe they deserve a fair explanation instead of: "Accept it because I said so, or because it is"

In a world where private companies almost replace state responsibilities(take health for example, or social security), no mather if you agree or not, this demands and public pressure is more important than ever.

Yeah, right. Because cars have stopped being produced once the seat belt was implemented, and required.
Also airplanes are a thing of the past because of crazy safety demands.

Oh, come now... is my attitude really "disappointing?" I think not.

Pretty much everything in our society is a product. Money is poured into developing the thing, and subsequently poured once again into maintaining and improving it. The source of "all that money" comes from one thing and one thing only: sales.

Apple built that product in order to sell it, and "sell it" they did. They have been remarkably open about how it works, although they patented the bejeezus out of the thing to keep competition at bay (if only for a little while). But their stated purpose throughout is to sell phones and music players (and to comply with the sometimes onerous copyright restrictions of the owners of the material that you play).

Every company, I would argue, works exactly the same way. (Never mind that some of them are named, "Microsoft." ) The system basically works. It has delivered into your hands a very nice piece of sturdy electronics at a nominal cost.

Yes, indeed, you can deploy Linux on such a device: the project is basically called "Android."

I think that it's not that you are not right on how companies work. I think it's a matter of "What should we do about it", that me and Goddard mostly disagree. Also I believe your last line "And, if things didn't work that way, you wouldn't have an iPhone/iPod in your pocket right now.", is an unhappy one.

And now we get into a discussion of the pitfalls of capitalism...
SHOULD companies from a moral standpoint open source everything, thus promoting human knowledge and growth of ideas? yes, they should, MORALLY. that would be best for the technological community as a whole.

Under the current ecenomic system, is that viable? no. I'm a fan if the research that goes on in universities, because the focus is on acquiring and spreading knowledge, getting recognition for achievements, as opposed to pure profit. But in terms of industry, that's kind of worthless.

So, there is you, the goodhearted linux developers who kindly devote your time and money to making free software. I thank you with all my heart. Your kindness has allowed me to run a free-of-charge operating system and tons of amazing software, and even open the source and see how it works.

But sadly, not everyone is as kind as you, and we come to the crossroads. We can accept the status quo of linux being small and marginalized, we can hope that more and more people suddenly devote their time and money to the cause... or we can find a better ecenomic system. just saying...

as for me, I'm content with having linux marginalized, and I can only hope that more and more people will support the cause. People are amazing... their generosity can never be predicted.

Well, there are too many things about it that I don't like. I think it's too slow, the interface is clunky, and it's not very intuitive. For example, when I plug my phone in, I then have two "music" folders. One on my phone, the other on my pc. Clicking the wrong thing will delete stuff from my phone, or (worse) from my computer. A friend signed up for MobleME (since I had it, and told her I liked it). Well, after syncing, she wound up with THREE copies of every contact, calendar event, and bookmark and email. Since the two devices (iPhone and PC) are 'aware' of each other, and are fairly smart, how hard would it be to pop up a dialog saying "Hey, you've already got XXX on this phone...sure you want another one?"

When I look at things like Amarok, it's much cleaner and easier to use. If it had iPhone support just for music/videos, I'd be happy. Hell, older iPods plug in and sync just fine...easier, in fact, than they do with iTunes.

Not to get into a political dispute, but all things are connected. Big problems create small problems. It is like the ripple effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_effect A good example would be the movie Crash. It is science nothing magical. Another well renowned law is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion

Actually, it turns out that Newton's Laws of Motion aren't in fact correct, they're simply good approximations on a macro scale, but when you examine individual particles, they don't explain everything...
just saying...
but yeah, Goddart, you're right. This touches in issues far beyond software...

Hey jmite do you have any more information on that?

Hard to get into too much detail without explaining quantum mechanics, something which I myself don't fully understand, but the basic idea is that Newton didn't know the world was atomized (ie made of elementary particles), so his laws apply well to large, rigid objects. However, when you actually get down to the particles those objects are made of, ie quarks and electrons, strange stuff starts happening because of the particles wave functions.

For example, the whole "object in motion moves in a straight line unless acted upon by another force" doesn't fully work when you get particles that aren't actually defined as particles, but probabilities in space, they can jump around and do strange stuff, or when you send electrns through a very small slit, they don't bounce off as the laws of motion predict, but they diffract like waves, simultaneously passing through both slits (until you put a detector on one of the slits, then they start acting like particles.)

People with more physics knowledg,e feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...
wow, this was off topic...

Hi All,
Please forgive my 2-cents worth question but how hard would it be for us in the Linux community to do up an iTune-like player that could sync with an iPod/iPhone? Does it mean it needs to jailbreak the iPod or iPhone (http://www.poorlad.com/iCommunity/)?

I think part of the issue is with encrypted firmware on the ipod, but im not sure.
What do you mean by sync? I can add songs to my ipod with rythmbox, banshee, amarok, songbird etc. as far as I know... I think the support is there, it's just kind of iffy at times, not always as straightforward as with itunes...