itunes shutout?

I'm a MAC user, and I usually use iTunes to play my tunes. Some time ago I decided to never update iTunes on principle. It was clear that burning mixes, playing around with my library, etc. were getting progressively more annoying / restrictive. New features I didn't want appeared, old features I did disappeared. After a recent move, my harddrive crashed and I had to reinstall everything. Best I could do was Leopard, since the computer is a dual G5 (I discovered upon taking it to the Apple store that it is officially classified by them as "vintage" (since it is over 5 years old) and they will not work on it anymore). So, right now, the computer runs Leopard-era iTunes with zero updates. Two days ago, I was unable to access the iTunes store, and haven't been able to since.

(Not only did I access it in the recent past after reinstalling everything, but bought several tracks. Note: the iTunes store remembers your past purchases, but will not let you download them again without re-purchase. This means, for example, if you try to download an album you only owned a couple tracks from in the past, it assumes you want to "complete" it, making redownloading the tracks you lost that much more annoying. Thank you iTunes for making my harddrive loss that much more painful.)

I wonder if this indicates a deliberate attempt to shutout users of older versions of iTunes from acquiring new tracks (which Apple doubtless assumes they will bootleg, because why else would they not want a clutter of useless new features)? Or, is this just the result of some iTunes website update that assumed no one out there could possibly be running Leopard-era iTunes without updates anymore (and so there was no reason to give a fig about backwards compatibility)?

playing cards

Cards are 52 rectangles of stiff paper, or cardstock decorated uniformly (to ensure indistinguishability) on one side, on the other, divided into four "suits" of thirteen cards each, numbered from two to ten, plus a jack, a queen, a king, and an ace.

Cards are randomized via a physical process called "shuffling," which can be realized via a number of techniques. Proper randomness is achieved by seven "shuffles."

Although a number of different games involving any number of players and cards (e.g. poker, "go fish") are possible, there is a long tradition of four player games, where each is dealt thirteen cards (i.e. a quarter of the deck). Usually, one suit is declared "trump" (i.e. it dominates cards of any other suit, no matter their value), and play proceeds as players lay down cards sequentially. Every four cards constitute a "trick" which one player wins and keeps for himself. Games in this tradition include whist, bridge, spades, and hearts.

I appear to be a member of the last generation for which the above is common knowledge. Casual questioning of average samples of those not ten years my junior reveals (i) the general assumption that card games are simply a subset of computer games, (ii) uncertain knowledge about the constitution of a deck, and (iii) a vanishingly small understanding of appropriate randomization procedures.