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> And the second thing you mention is not equally delusional as the first why exactly?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/google-acquires-video-compression-technology-company-on2-for-106-million/

When you're at the bottom, the only place you can go is up.

Tell that to AOL and Ask (the two bottom search engines), who have both been losing market share over the last couple months, according to the Barclay's Capital chart from the article.

Hilariously, the title of the /. article is "Bing Gaining Market Share Faster", although the chart clearly shows MS market share increase by 0.4, 0.5, 0.4, 0.1, 0.5, 0.4, and 0.4 percent for each month from June (when Bing was launched) through December, respectively. An honest title would have been "Bing Continues To Gain Market Share At Roughly The Same Rate It Has Since Launch". Of course that's not even taking into account the other reports we've heard recently about Bing supposedly losing market share.

Also, this is my first time seeing query growth being considered as some kind of particularly important/significant statistic. I'm not saying it's not a valid/useful statistic, just that I've never before seen so much importance placed on it.

The report is "Bing Gains Market Share Faster"

It is all the way up to 10.7% now. Fine. Google has 65.7%.

You can show HUGE increases in your rate of market gain when hardly anybody is looking at you and then a few more look at you. The same number of eyeballs for Google is a small increase.

Am I wrong, or did someone cherry pick the most appealing metric for Bing to write a story about?

You're wrong.

Did you RTFA or are you acting dumb to get some moderator love? All the percentages quoted are based on the 100% of overall search users, NOT relative growth of a particular search engine.. Since you won't RTFA, here it is http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/searchsharedec09.jpg

Your argument only applies to the last line of the summary, the 49.7% growth in search volume for Bing.

Yeah, it's not fair that Microsoft is using IE to promote Bing and is paying off other people to use it.

Take Google for example, they set their own search engine as default in Chrome and pay Mozilla to use Google.

That is what Microsoft should do. Go Google!

The "upgrade" process is to simply mount your old ext3 volume as ext4, and let new writes take advantage of ext4 features.

You say that like it's a good thing. one error, like an assumption in the maximum number of files or clusters causes a wrap round and it all goes tits up.

It's not like they haven't dropped the ball before: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/28/gmail-disaster-reports-of-mass-email-deletions/

Do no evil, but be a bit incompetent sometimes.

But Zynga can easily prove me wrong by stopping these practices....

They did.

Exactly, and I think we will see much more such too. China is improving its economy fast currently, with the USA's economy crisis and huge debts. They're getting their foot between the door, and I think both China and Russia will be starting to have a lot larger influence on global economy soon. Russian entrepreneurs are already buying big shares of US companies and gaining larger share of US corporations. China (and Taiwan) is attacking from the cheap manufacturing and resources supply front, India is attacking from the cheap programming and computer technology front, and Russia is attacking from the ownership of US companies front. With the huge government debts and economic slowdown, what will happen to US? It's already known the spendings are too much and theres no possibility to live on debt forever.

I never really searched through past email

I am, frankly, dumbfounded to hear someone say this. I find myself grepping old mail at least several times a month.

but I did lose archives during sync operations and missed having access to email when at the office. Gmail wins this battle every time

Gmail does not win the data loss battle every time.

As for access, all my personal mail (and also the mail from my current job) includes is in MH folders on my home box. I can ssh in from anywhere -- even from my phone -- and have access to e-mail archives going back more than a decade from MH, alpine, or standard command-line tools.

I promise to reply to emails quickly wherever I am if you promise never to ask me to remember what we talked about.

Ah. Well, if you never discuss anything worthwhile by e-mail, I suppose your needs are different.

Am I alone thinking that if this company wins their suit maybe Microsoft would actually rename their search engine to something not as cringeworthy?

You're both alone and wrong. It's just a buggy, ad-ridden front end for the WolframAlpha search engine and serves as a distraction from what Microsoft Activist Icahn and his attack dogs started doing to Yahoo.

After re-branding Live Search as "Bing", to leave the baggage associated with the old name, they also struck a deal so that Bing is a front-end for Wolfram Alpha plus whatever Live Search might have had. So to get those results unmodified, you don't have to go through M$ filter, you can go straight to WolframAlpha skipping the middle man. Not at all difficult.

There are even meta-search engines that can cross-search both Google and Wolfram Alpha for you. For Firefox there is the Goofram add-on which lets you search both at the same time. If you're on Opera, Safari or Chromium, there are also search customization options there, too

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/26/video-introducing-bing-the-better-way-to-google/

Yeah, I knew somebody would provide that link... :) That was a good one...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/26/video-introducing-bing-the-better-way-to-google/

The app store is getting full of this junk: fifty dollar "apps" that give you credit in some ridiculous game. And worse. The "social" aspect is focused on trying to hook your friends and acquaintances in; it's not MMO, it's Amway.

Mafia Wars CEO Brags About Scamming Users From Day One and Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell are good starting points, if you haven't seen this before (or realized it as obvious).

It's not someONE. A company of the size of Microsoft doesn't have the same person doing the UI design and the coding. Yet here they very clearly stole both the UI design AND the code. It's very clearly Microsoft China that is responsible. They don't get to lay the blame on some rogue coder.

You assume that anything MS sells or provides is written by MS. You're wrong:

Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We are working with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.

Unfortunately, when these questions first arose, it was the middle of the night in China. Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information.

Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint venture contracted with an independent vendor to create a feature called MSN Juku that allowed MSN users to find friends via microblogging and online games. This MSN Juku feature was made available to MSN China users in November and is still in beta.

Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully.

We will provide additional information as we learn more.

As a poster noted above, MS contracted for the code, and this is what the vendor gave them. I'm sure the vendor expected the PM to change the look and feel of the interface and thereby obscure their theft, but their laziness caught up with them.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/14/microsoft-has-no-answer-to-china-plurk-debacle//

Well, Microsoft has answered some to it:

Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We are working with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.

Unfortunately, when these questions first arose, it was the middle of the night in China. Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information.

Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint venture contracted with an independent vendor to create a feature called MSN Juku that allowed MSN users to find friends via microblogging and online games. This MSN Juku feature was made available to MSN China users in November and is still in beta.

Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully.

We will provide additional information as we learn more.

"At the $250 price level, the larger screen would have been worth it; at $500, no way."

Let's not forget there's a huge legal battle going on too, and these companies aren't exactly dell, they don't have billions to fight off in court, if they go under and something breaks on your $500 JooJoo how do you get your money back from a defunct company in Taiwan? And how does this Taiwan company think they own it? If I went to some guy and said "hey i want you to build this for me, here's the design and schematic", and he said screw off, built it himself and sold a million copies, I think I'd have some legal recourse.

This whole thing stinks to high heaven. Runs proprietary code so who knows what you can really do with it. It's like a large iPod Touch at double the price with no developers and made in Taiwan, what good is it really? How come I can buy a fake iPod touch for $50 but this thing is $500 and really just a larger iPod Touch? Something doesn't add up.

Look, you are the one who said fair use is under constant attack. If you don't even know what it is, how can you say it is under attack?

My initial post refuted an obvious factual error by the previous poster, namely that fair use did not exist in copyright law.

The AC is entirely correct - it is not under attack, because there is nothing to attack.

It's amazing that you can't admit that both you an he are wrong. See above. Fair use is part of copyright law, both in case law and statutory law. I don't know how much plainer it can be said.

Your reply of "If you don't know what it is, how can you say it's under attack" is poor logic. The lack of clarity is due to how the law is written, and it is written that way because much of fair use is an ephemeral concept. Although there are gray areas, there are also clearly established areas where fair use is allowed. If you want a more nuanced or precise interpretation, go put a lawyer on retainer and have him/her look up the matter. In the immortal words of Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it."

Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.

So, to sum up:
a) Fair use is part of copyright law, and
b) it is generally described, but not always precisely defined, making it vulnerable to attack, as well as vulnerable to exploitation.

You go on to say:

Name ONE instance of fair use being under attack

If you are in need of specific instances, I would suggest looking into the large number of DMCA takedown notices the MPAA and RIAA issue without regard to legitimate fair use. For example, I recall reading (sorry, can't remember where) about a Youtube video of a child which was taken down because it contained a TV in the background, on which were shown a few seconds of some show. Or look here for a similarly ridiculous takedown.

However, rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll defer to legal experts. I hope that citing a law professor meets your expectations.

Recently, developments in the business, technology and legal fields have created situations where areas that used to be protected are now included in as part of an artist’s incentivized market. Through the technological advances in internet video and distribution, overstated legal threats and cost driven business decisions winning out over costly legal arguments, the uses that the Fair Use doctrine previously protected are being absorbed into potential markets or eliminated completely.

In other words, the balance between fair use and IP owners' rights has swung decidedly in favor of the IP owners. Groups like the RIAA are trying to restrict what used to be clearly fair use.

By linking to an article discussing backups, you try to insinuate that at some point it was considered fair use to make backups, and now i

Arrington pulled a SourceForge.

        http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

He declared a project, didn't put much in beyond the idea for the project, and then expected people to flock to the project and build it for him. Very much the same way people declare projects on SourceForge, and then expect volunteer programmers to come out of the woodwork and build whatever their pet project happens to be.

The only difference here is that it involved both hardware and software, and not just software.

I went to the Internet WayBack Machine and read all of the blogs from Fusion Garage (the actual site is currently down, probably intentionally), and it looks like all of the software was done by them, including the OS, and it looks (from Arrington's blogs) like a lot of the hardware was done by Intel.

I don't mean to discount the value of vision or publicity, but really, he intended to Open Source everything about the tablet when he declared the project, and I don't really see a lot of value being taken from him in that case, since he wouldn't be building hardware anyway. The only money would be in margin on the hardware if the software was all out there. A lot of people have posted similar specifications for what they'd like to see in a tablet computer, and the only difference between them and Arrington is Arrington has a lot of self-publicity and got a startup to bite on the bait to actually build the thing.

Arrington might have some arguments with regard to industrial design, but the prototype hardware was not built by him, and the software that made that hardware live and breathe was definitely not his.

I've worked at combo hardware/software startups, and I've worked at software-only startups (including my own), and universally, the hardware in the hardware/software startups was all about minimal COGS and industrial design (being at Apple now, that's pretty much all there is). The value-add over commodity hardware is that it isn't "cheapest vendor of the part of the day" (so the hardware is reliable and not crap because of constantly retooled assembly lines), and it's the software. When Apple builds a laptop, it doesn't build hardware, and it doesn't build software, it builds systems. The people who don't get that and churn out 1.5%-4% margin crap do so at their peril.

My reading of things is that Arrington is no Jonathan Ive, and he's no Steve Jobs when it comes to design of hardware or software.

Fusion Garage may have taken his idea and run with it.. and they want to cut him in on profits from something, the intrinsic value of which he intended to give away for no profit, but they don't seem to be ripping him off to do it, although they do seem to be leveraging as much as they can to get him to accept a minority role with regard to what he brings to the table (which, per the above, by my reckoning, isn't much; sorry, Arrington).

As more than one V.C. has told me in the past, the point is not the idea; there are millions of good ideas that go unfunded all the time (I'll point at SourceForge again, where "funding" equates to "provision of manpower necessary to complete a project"); what a V.C. funds is the ability to execute on a vision, no matter whose vision it is, and the team behind that ability to execute on the vision and bring a product to market. 1 in 10 entrepreneurs get funded; 1 in 10 of those fail in the first year. That's only a 1 in 100 chance of being around after a year.

Arrington's failure is no less spectacular than anyone else's in that 99 out of 100 failures, he's just made it more public by ranting about it.

Ironically, the idea may still not be a failure, merely a failure on his part to control the thing which was built on his (and a lot of other peoples similar) idea, if Fusion Garage or someone else simply continues on and executes on it.

Good luck in your future endeavors, but don't think that by declaring an idea publically that you've built or created anything.

-- Terry

I have no reason to doubt that Arrington is being screwed here, and that he does in fact have intellectual property rights that are being trampled on, but how much hard work did he actually do on this thing? My understanding is that he mostly said, "I want this thing with these specs at this price, make it happen" and his manufacturing partner is the one that actually built it.

Well, to Arrignton's credit he (or the TechCrunch side of things) did build the first prototype. He also provided office space for Fusion Garage and no doubt was integral in the testing. There's also a lot of talk about setting up distribution and funding although it's hard to say how much of that was Arringtons doing. Overall I would say Arrington has contributed at least an equal share into the project.

I'm guessing you must not be familiar with the offline features of Google Gears which is included in Chrome:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/gmail-goes-offline-with-google-gears/
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/bringing-cloud-with-you.html

Is September 22, 2009 (and here) recent enough for you? It does say they plan to use the technology in their own products, but Microsoft has said that lots of times and not followed through. They are definitely killing the product line though.

well according to this

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/video-professor-washington-post-scamville/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

(link is in the summary)

Essentially it appears your getting a couple of free CD's and paying a few dollars for shipping. In reality you get sent a bunch of stuff and billed $289.95 (they have your credit card details from the 4 dollar shipping charge) In theory there is a get out clause return one of the lessons within 10 days then you don't get billed but apparently thats not so easy to do.

Is it a scam? Well if you didn't intend to purchase $289.95 worth of cd's I'd say yes, because there is some text on the front page which says they will bill you $289.95 and its also hidden away in a bunch of small print they say no.

The order summary only mentions $4.56 shipping charges for 3 cd's

They target the gullible, computer novices who don't realize they are giving away access to their credit card.

Probably the only defense against this kind of abuse are one time credit cards but even then your credit score could take a bashing.

Or you can read the first article linked, which goes into great detail about video professor.
Perhaps you should RTEntireFA?

It's not a minor point in the article, it's the entire article. This is the article, the other link in the summary was just an aside...

The article really takes video professor apart. It's a total scam and there's no more doubt about it.

After the search is where it gets better.

Not really. After re-branding Live Search as "Bing", to leave the baggage associated with the old name, they also struck a deal so that Bing is a front-end for Wolfram Alpha plus whatever Live Search might have had. So to get those results unmodified, you don't have to go through M$ filter, you can go straight to Wolfram Alpha skipping the middle man. Not difficult.

There are even meta-search engines that can cross-search both Google and Wolfram Alpha for you. For Firefox there is the Goofram add-on which lets you search both at the same time. If you're on Opera, Safari or Chromium, there are also search customization options there, too.

You know, the one where I can buy VOIP apps for the iPhone that work over 3G?

Well, technically you can't buy it since it's free. I had to include that disclaimer because in a desperate attempt to salvage some dignity I imagine you might try to further attack me on that point.

I guess you should have spent longer than ten seconds on Google and not tried to outwit someone who knows what the hell they are talking about. I guess you should not assume that Skype is the only VOIP app on the planet, I suppose that may well be amistake many non-technical users would make. How embarrassing to be you!

There are plans to use Silverlight for the 2010 winter olympics as well. It seems to be a trend.

Myhrvold is one of Microsoft's biggest and most active patent trolls. Technically, blogging for pay is a legal business model. If slashdot is getting paid to market him, then fine, but at least disclose it.

The problem is that some of those actions that you can do to get "tokens" are just a scam. They say it's just a free survey, but at the end of the survey they ask for your phone number to confirm that you've completed it, and then they just charge you $9.99 a month until you figure it out.
Farmville did exactly that, and I bet others do it too.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/

Very depressing.

How does litl make navigating easy and fun?

litl replaces the keyboard, touchscreen, mouse, and touchpad with one simple WHEEL

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/macbook-wheel-debuts-on-the-onion/

Even the most forgetful person can be reminded of an event and recall it with vivid clarity. Alzheimer's sufferers can overcome some of the difficulties of the disease with a device like the Life Recorder.

So when we say that someone's (or some rat's) memory is improved, what exactly is improved? Is it the recall ability? If so, does that mean that the rat is somehow able to logically filter out unnecessary information to reach the important memory? Or does it mean that the rat's memory has been structured in a better way? Is it only a spatial thing, or can it work for any type of information?

As someone with a bad memory, I would be very interested in understanding how this actually works within the rat's brain.

the bad guys are clever at gaming the system; for example THEY do know how to encrypt their sensitive emails. So the damage will hit ordinary folks disproportionally while the crooks will often be able to evade

we all benefit from the growth of the internet, for example the recent surge in cloud computing. Do we really want to dampen this progress with legal concerns about privacy?

This is not to say that we should let the bad guys off the hook entirely. It may be new laws are needed.

The NSA is building huge new data centers in Utah and Texas. If TechCrunch is to be believed they will store a "yottabyte" which is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB of data from communication intercepts. You kind of figure that only thing that would require this much storage is they are probably going to record pretty much everything going through every fiber optic cable they can tap, plus all the radio communications they can eavesdrop on with satellites. That would probably be all phone calls, all email, all IM, probably every URL ever computer is accessing.

This will be extremely convenient since:

A) you can data mine it and find all kinds of interesting things, terrorist threats, political dissidents, politicians doing illegal or immoral things which you can use to blackmail them later to make them vote the way you want them to vote. This may have already been done to Jane Harmon who was caught in a warrentless wire tap doing something illegal, influence peddling, with Israeli lobbyists. This might have been used by the Bush administration to force her to back some of their activities since she is on the House Intelligence committee which oversees.... communications surveillance (at least is supposed to if the White House bothers to tell them what they are doing which they didn't when they started this NSA program originally).

B) even if a person isn't of interest now, if they become of interest later, you can hop in the way back machine and see everything they've said and done

It would obviously be problematic for the NSA to do this if there were any warrants required at all. Needless to say the Obama administration is just continuing pervasive spying on everyone and everything started under Bush and this court case, were it to succeed, would be inconvenient since it would almost certainly establish this program is unconstitutional and therefor illegal. Obama is just another in a long line of politicians dedicated to constantly expanding their power and the power of the Federal government. At this point the Federal government is an out of control snow ball rolling going down hill turning in to an avalanche.

They are the ones making the bulk of the contributions to Symbian^3 and Symbian^4, so I would assume that they have at least a passing interest in the platform.

That about sums it up - a "passing interest", as in, on the wane.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/08/11/nokia-ditching-symbian-for-maemo-german-ft-reports/ Nokia ditching Symbian for Maemo, German FT reports
by Markus Goebel on August 11, 2009

Nokia doesn't trust its Symbian mobile operating system any more and plans to equip many of its smartphones with the mostly open source Maemo operating system it uses in its Internet tablets, according to undisclosed Nokia sources speaking to the Financial Times in Germany (FTD). The Finnish company completed acquisition of Symbian just four months ago. So guys, that was 264m well spent.

FTD quotes a source close to Nokia saying: "Symbian is much too cumbersome to keep up with modern operating systems. We have to react." Nokia hasn't provided an official response; a Nokia spokesman only said that they don't comment on industry speculation. But this is clearly dynamite stuff. If it is true, it would actually be a smart move; the investment in Symbian hasn't yet borne fruit, and Nokia is steadily losing market share to former niche players RIM and Apple, and soon Android.

A first device, the Nokia N900 or "Rover" is expected for Amsterdam's Maemo Summit in October 2009.

The FTD names Symbian's old code as the reason for its poor performance. The software is based on Psion's Epoc OS which was developed in the 90s. Symbian now consist of 20 million lines of code, that's nearly as much as Windows XP has. Experts say that new central functions are very difficult to implement. This explains why Nokia needed so much time to come up with a touchscreen competitor for the iPhone.

The Nokia N97 from June 2009 required heavy tweaking on the Symbian software. It's touchscreen OS still looks aged and the handling is far from easy and not always logical. Another pain for Nokia is Google's Android OS. Devices like T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic are selling very well. The HTC Hero with its Palm Pre like Sense UI is expected to be incredibly popular device which Nokia will struggle to compete with. Only Nokia's hardware with strong batteries and good cameras is still an advantage.

Since June it's obvious that Nokia has bigger plans for Maemo. They have announced a strategic relationship with Intel to "shape next era of mobile computing innovation". The effort also includes "technology development and cooperation in several open source software initiatives in order to develop common technologies for use in the Moblin and Maemo platform projects, which will deliver Linux-based operating systems for these future mobile computing devices".

Nokia wants to make the former geek OS a "mainstream platform", said Maemo manager Quim Gil in July on a developer summit in Gran Canaria.

It wouldn't be the first time that Nokia makes an acquisition just to throw it away. In the last four years Nokia spent billions to buy companies like Intellisync, Sega.com, Loudeye, Twango, Enpocket, Oz Communications, Gate5, Starfish Software, Navteq, Avvenu, Plazes and Cellity. Navteq alone cost $8 billion but it's difficult to recognize a strategy in this buying frenzy. The mobile company solution from Intellisync, which cost $430 million, has been discontinued after three years and sacrificed in favour of Microsoft's Mail for Exchange.

Symbian will only be used in down-market dumb phones.

Not everyone has read http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/28/schwarzenegger-gives-california-legislature-a-hidden-finger/

Now that Google and Bing are getting the firehose, it could have a big impact on search results. For the search engines, the firehose is much more valuable than any single Tweet. They can index it and sift it, looking for patterns and spikes in keywords and shared links to get a better sense of what people across the Web are paying attention to at any given moment. This data can then be folded back into regular search results, even if the top result isn't a Tweet.

For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about "healthcare reform." If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking. But Google and Bing can use the firehose as a rich source of signals to mine and then blend back into regular search results.

Twitter cut deals with Bing and Google.

Another example of "Sensational headlines sells", before this ./ post even went live more details became available that in fact this is about adding music to the search results and that the songs found can be played through iLike, last.fm, lala, etc.. and offer 'Click to buy' links to iTunes and Amazon.

So no, Google is not taking on iTunes or Amazon, in fact it will help sell their music.

That doesn't mean however this isn't a very nifty feature :)

Screenshots and more info are available at:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-to-partner-with-ilike-and-lala-for-new-music-service/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-music-service-the-screenshots/

Another example of "Sensational headlines sells", before this ./ post even went live more details became available that in fact this is about adding music to the search results and that the songs found can be played through iLike, last.fm, lala, etc.. and offer 'Click to buy' links to iTunes and Amazon.

So no, Google is not taking on iTunes or Amazon, in fact it will help sell their music.

That doesn't mean however this isn't a very nifty feature :)

Screenshots and more info are available at:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-to-partner-with-ilike-and-lala-for-new-music-service/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-music-service-the-screenshots/

According to TechCrunch, it's a music search with the option to do limited streaming. So you can search for music, preview them, then either use those services to buy or use iTunes/Amazon to buy it.

CNET - Owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Sky - Owned by Rupert Murdoch.

CBS, actually:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/15/why-cbs-bought-cnet-and-not-the-other-way-around/

If it'd been a Myspace survey or something from the Times, the Courier-Mail or the WSJ, you'd have had a point.

consider the source of the summary which was blatantly ripped from techcrunch and micheal arrogent ... take with a giant grain of salt

If you scroll down the page there is a picture here.

Apple takes a cut on them all with almost no risk.

Is this true? *googles* God, you're right. I had no idea - combined with the fact that you have no choice but to host with Apple, it dismays me that any developer touches them with a bargepole.

Any other platform, you host where you like, for how much you like. And plenty of websites offer hosting for free.

And it's not like it's a small cut - according to this, it's a whopping 30%.

There is, however, an early-adopter market segment that cares about being able to use Google Voice. These users avoid the iPhone. Whether they know it or not, they are choosing platforms with open application development over Apple's closed model.

He's a loser. FAIL.

Somebody who likes to bitch on a blog about stuff, but disables comments. Not being too harsh I think (from his blog) that his carear so far (not including bitching on blogs like uncov and the register):
write unicode support for employee database at google (CBA, I think he has a point, if you weren't employed to solve exactly that kind of fucking problem)
write new search engine (CBA)

Now people get a bit sick of RMS/Linus/(etc i really don't follow that kind of blog)'s whining, but i most of those guys do have a track record featuring at least one success.

Also, in case you haven't read the full sumamry - note this big failure of offsite storage: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/t-mobile-sidekick-disaster-microsofts-servers-crashed-and-they-dont-have-a-backup/

Offsite is pointless. Cloud is pointless. Local is GOD.

Good link, wrong conclusion.

Offsite is important, and REDUNDANCY is critical.

Also, in case you haven't read the full sumamry - note this big failure of offsite storage: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/t-mobile-sidekick-disaster-microsofts-servers-crashed-and-they-dont-have-a-backup/

Offsite is pointless. Cloud is pointless. Local is GOD.