ahk

Ok gotta ask... Why??

I was responding to the parent's point about "only" "N1 maybe", which is obviously false.

The fact that Google Voice is actually available in the US on pretty much all Android phones, makes your point moot.

The iPhone does not have one of the most innovative apps for a phone. QED.

Have you/the OP heard of Android's extremely lively mod scene? Cyanogen even supports the ancient G1 to very nearly the latest 2.1 version of android.

Where am I attacking Apple in my post? I'm actually as much of an Apple fanboy as anyone else who stands in line at the Apple store waiting for hours for their product releases. And I've done that myself once.

But just because I love Apple products, it doesn't mean I cannot also defend Android when someone blames it for something thats not its fault. I love Google and Android for what they do too.

And yes, the openness leading to such situations is not Google/Android's fault. Just as much as an authorized gun salesman making a legal sale is not at fault when someone then uses their guns to go postal.

Also, the OP getting so worked up comparing support for a little known model of cellphone to Apple's flagship product is funny if not foolish.

Oh come on. Blaming Android for Verizon/Motorola's failings (and your own in not realizing what everyone was saying was _the_ advantage of the Nexus One) as well as rapid technological progress is pathetic.

Do you even remember the stunt Apple pulled a few years ago where they dropped the price of iPhone from $599 to $399? Do you intend to ping pong between Apple and Android whenever they announce such decisions?

I think at some point the AI goalpost will move beyond "capable of human judgement" as well :) (see Asimov's stories of R.Daneel & R.Giskard for example).

I'm one of those who believes we'll crack AI (all aspects of it) at some point. I believe that the algorithm that our brains (and that of most animals) use is a very simple one that just needs tremendous parallel processing. I don't think anyone including IBM is yet thinking at that level (they work at too high a level for my tastes) and they do not consider enough of biology in their work (too computer-science-y, which prevents problem solving at the beginning).

I think it's just a matter of time before the neuroscientists have most of the details of brain and neuron functioning and we're able to decode the algo and replicate it on computers. And then it will be upto hardware progress to match first animal and then human intelligence.

I find cinnamon tea (with no actual tea) to be quite tasty.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/health-benefits-cinnamon/

Nice! Hoping to see the "no known antidote exists" tag disappear by the next decade or so.

Yup. And what's the deal with it not having an horizontal scroll bar?

I wonder if that's an indirect attack on Google. Very nice feature though.

How many news organizations have good journalists though? I can count the ones I like on my fingers and some of them are mostly just bloggers as well. The market can support a few organizations doing international stuff, most of the rest just need reprint permissions.

The field is moving to much more federated-ness very quickly. People will not pay. Newspapers will not survive. Sorry.

What's wrong with those things? Obviously books costing $70 or $100 are not priced to target people subsisting on ramen noodles. And it's only the current debt-madness which has lead people to think those prices are anywhere near sane.

Have you tried going to an Apple store and just asking for the non-3G iPad + refund of the difference?

If enough people do that, Apple will need to respond to this.

How so? If you've invested some amount of resources in something but it didn't work out, the best move is to cut your losses and move on.

Yup, and all those Memorial Day road trips are only going to fund more BP oil wells.

The disconnect people have on this issue with their own actions is amazing.

I was most interested in seeing whether the Volcker rule got through, but the news reports I've read are very conflicting, with some claiming it's in and some that it's been watered down to meaninglessness.

Given all that tough talk by Obama when he first proposed it in that news conference, I'm very surprised to see such poor mention of it subsequently. News channels seem to not even want to report on it. Sad (and maddening) to see such a visible act of Wall Street's power.

Kirkland's fish oil/omega-3 (this one is good enough for me, no issues)

Now/Carlsson's vit D3 (2000IU)

LEF's magnesium, taurine and super-k (vit. k1 + k2)

GNC's creatine monohydrate

I take these on and off or cyclically (some are bad combinations). I'm thinking of getting a multivitamin, but most of them have their own shortcomings.

Seems slow. What's with the multiple redirects? Results seem ok though.

But no privacy policy that I could locate so far, which is a bad sign

That was... unexpected.

A sign of the times if some bureaucrat's got the courage and sense of liberty to publish such a article openly.

Is selling a house in this market a good idea? The important thing is to not let your possessions tie you down. If you own it outright, maybe you can just rent your place out while you check to see if that sort of a life is for you or not?

I think the idea is to find a way to have access to those items (that you need only occasionally) when you need them. Something like zipcar (for those who need vehicular transport only for weekend groceries for example). IMO on-demand is the way to go for nearly everything.

Also, http://unclutterer.com/2010/05/11/evicting-justin-case/

Haha, I did the same thing and on a Honda Civic too. Charlotte to Chicago. The feeling of mobility and adventure and an open future was fantastic. By the next time, I'm hoping to cut my "stuff" down to just a carry-on and a laptop bag.

Granted that they are different industries, but still you'd think the putative intelligentsia of our times, our writers and story tellers, especially in sci-fi, would be ahead of the curve and not so far behind it.

Very cool. More power to you my friend.

Some free suggestions for your site: You should try jazzing it up a bit. Blue is a dull colour. Bright is good. Nowadays any worthwhile site needs to include comments, reviews and ratings, twitter/blippy integration etc. The more social the better. You should also have book page previews and maybe youtube-hosted videos of author interviews/talks. Basically be an information rich site. Branching out to e-magazine publishing say for short stories (maybe get onto the iPad/Kindle that way) can help de-risk the business.

You should also develop a focus on some specific domain like the college textbook domain and market it heavily to that audience (professors/students). Discount cash/gift cards sold at campuses, good referral systems, mobile payment options, iphone/android integration are all good.

As you can see I've been giving this quite a bit of thought myself :), but don't think it's something I want to get into at the moment. Have at it and best of luck to you.

A poor person has a different relationship with the things he/she purchases than a rich person. One of the ways this manifests itself is in store returns and higher demands on customer support (as well as, sometimes, a lack of appreciation or desire to pay for quality). This seems obvious to me and I don't feel the need to be PC on the internet.

What they have said and are saying is that the publishers are so powerful that they, the content creators, don't even get a say in setting prices or demanding better returns, because that's the way it's always been done.

Any requests to them to stand up for their readers (like the recent pubisher price control mechanisms on ebooks or DRM schemes or region controls) results in a "Haha, you're kidding right? We have zero control over what the publishers do with our output".

I'm saying, the publishers have nowhere to go if you dont write the books. The relationship is a total inverse of what it should be. Even music artists, normally thought to be clueless/careless on real world matters, are already taking big stances on DRM and their ability to distribute/sell etc and sticking up for their fans. The writers' backwardness (and plain old ludditism) in this regard is mighty strange.

Authors like Stross or Scalzi need to see this bit about "Learned Helplessness" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Their attitude of publishers being all-powerful is one that needs to die.

Sorry, but that's just extreme foolishness. Glucose makes sense if you're at the Olympics starting a 100m sprint (to win enough money so that you don't need to be that foolish again). Any other time, it's like you're sadistically kicking your pancreas everyday or defibrillating your heart everyday. You are on route to early disability (including blindness/fractures/loss of limbs) and an early grave due to multiple organ failures.

You'd better be hoping science comes through with cheap organ replacement/re-growth therapies soon and that you are rich enough to afford them. In the meantime, you could try common-sense or even some education.

My guess is it's the 80/20 rule applied to customers and Apple likes profit margins much more than just revenues.

Also, it's stereotypical that third world folks abuse store return policies and customer support in general.