@cave

A. You're right, it is well within their rights
B. They're not "abusing" their customers by shutting down a third party workaround that they explicitly said they were never giong to support in the first place.
C. This is not a discussion of Microsoft's profitability, it doesn't matter whether why they did this
D. Even if it was an issue of profitability, Microsoft has made 312 Million this year from the games and entertainment division and 115 million last year, and NOTHING BUT LOSSES every year prior to that.

If you want to complain that you really wish Microsoft would support this, fine, but for heaven's sake it is not anti-consumer to not support something they said they wouldn't support. You want to complain to someone? Complain to Datel, they're the ones who mislead you.

@Cave

Maybe no one is SAYING it's a hack, but it its a hack. A hardware hack to work around microsoft's lack of support for third party peripherals. Even if a consumer did buy it from Best Buy next to the official product, how is that Microsoft's fault. Microsoft's position on this has always been that they do not support or allow third party peripherals. If Best Buy gave the impression that they did, that is Best Buy's fault not Microsoft's. Much more importantly it is Datal, for saying things on the item in question such as "100% compatible with the Xbox." Is it confusing for the consumer? Yes, it is, but that confusion was not created by Microsoft, it was created by Datal and, to a certain extent, the businesses that sold the consumer the product. I'll say it again, Microsoft is not under any obligation to support an unauthorized third party hardware hack, regardless of the fact Datal has purposefully confused customers.

@ Alec Munro

I guess you can complain if you want, but my response would be "Well, what did you expect? You were using a hack that Microsoft doesn't officially support." Much more importantly, you're purchase of the Xbox is an act of support and a tacit acceptance of the closed platform they said they were creating from the beginning. Fine, you can complain, but the complaint is nonsensical. "I can no longer use an unsupported hack" is about as far from reasonable as you can get.

If you want more open standards from companies, you have to support the companies with the most open standards in the market place. Right now your options are PC games for that. But hell, let's just say for the sake of argument you don't want to do PC games. the PS3 supports using standard cards instead of a proprietary interface. Use the PS3. You'll still be in a more closed platform than on a PC, but at least you are sending a signal to other companies regarding a certain level of hardware openness. But you bought an Xbox, and that means you bought the standards of the Xbox. It's hard to feel sympathy for you as a consumer at this stage.

@Matt

I appreciate that this item worked in the past and now it won't, but it worked in the past because it was a prepackaged hack, not because Microsoft ever gave a pretense of supporting it as a hardware solution. In that sense you can lament the loss of the option, but you can't say Microsoft is doing something underhanded because they never claimed they were going to support this.

I continue to be slightly amazed by people who are offended by companies that freeze out third party devices on their proprietary standards. If Microsoft had wanted an open product, they wouldn't have made their own interface for cards, and you would be able to just use a USB hard drive plugged into the box. They built their own interfaces because they wanted people to only use their products. It's not like this is new, people. Just ask Nintendo and Sony, who have been doing this since time immemorial.

Consoles traditionally are closed to third party products to either a large or small degree. Microsoft has chosen a large degree, and you know what? If you own an Xbox you don't get to complain about it. You bought into their world knowing full well how closed it was. All you can say now is that it'd be nice if Microsoft opened up their product but you can't get all worked up about Microsoft keeping their product closed because:

A. you knew that going in, and
B. it's their prerogative as the producer of that product

You want an open gaming option that uses industry wide standards for peripheral interfaces with lots of unusual options and no barrier on the production side to enter it? PLAY PC GAMES! It's about as open as you can get. You can buy any cool peripheral you want, you can store your games however you like, and you can buy any weird game that is produced because no one is looking over that games company's shoulder. Do that, or buy an xbox and enjoy it. But please do not complain about how you bought a highly subsidized product that made no pretense of being anything other than a closed product and now, HORROR, they're keeping it closed like they said they would.

"You're right, by this point in time the wifi adapter should be built in, but then again it shouldn't. When the 360 was first released it was reasonable that the wifi adapter was seperate for those who wanted it in order to keep the price down. Yes, the Wii and ps3 have it built in, but they were also released a year later. To begin adding wifi doesn't really make sense. It could bring in too much differentiation between the non-wifi systems and the wifi systems and could cause confusion. "What I thought 360s had wifi, mine doesn't have it?!?, Fu** Microsoft!!"

At this point in time Microsoft should wait until their next system to build wifi into the system.

On the other hand, Microsoft charges too much for the wifi adapters. These should be brought down in price. The 802.11g adapters shold be $30 while the 802.11n adapters should be $50."

That's only true if you believe that individuals can't understand very basic market segmentation or the differences between revised products. If Microsoft bundles Wifi into the Top-shelf model, people will generally understand that one will have built in wifi and one will not. And people will certainly understand that when buying used models, they need to check which model they are getting. According to you, Microsoft shouldn't be selling consoles with different HDD sizes because it will "confuse" customers.

If they made a whitelist the list would probably include almost every app on the store right now. A blacklist like this is specifically for disabling core location for applications that use location based information in a particularly malicious way. If you think about it, the most dangerous thing on this phone is the ability to know where you are at all times. I cannot envision a clear example where this would become necessary, but I bet Apple has, and they don't want to be held liable if the location based software on the iphone ends up getting someone killed, maimed, or robbed.

What category is this in?

they can't possibly be using mercury for a coolant in a consumer heat sink. imagine how much mercury would be required in order for that to work. All you'd need is one crack in the case, and you'd basically have to call in the EPA.

bitch, bitch bitch.

Whine, Whine, Moan.

I hate Apple.