nicotine
It's an Apple conspiracy. My friend's iPod has been acting up lately too. The way I see it is that they have a built in timer to make the iPods hate PC's on a certain date. Then since all the people love their iPods they can't part with it and are forced to buy a Macintosh.
CONSPIRACY I SAY
That's not just a theory: it's true! Or at least, I think so from the service a friend of mine received. She was having trouble getting her brand-new iPod and her computer to recognize each other, so she called the tech support. The guy told her that the only way for her to fix the problem was to purchase a Mac!
eek
(she later got it working...in Linux)