anon-e-moose

How does a VPN change anything? My point is that this gives Google easy access to stats about every website that is using Google-hosted web fonts. Like an old transparent tracking GIF...

Privacy?

(As in, are we really giving Google yet another look into the websites we visit?)

No it isn't. What an absolutely ridiculous claim. The two "Bach-like" pieces are rubbish, full of strange discontinuities and random meanderings, not to mention the rhythm just hammering away in a very set pattern. Reminds me of terrible beginning piano workbook pieces, only less musical.

On the next page, the other "fugue" does bizarre things that I don't think a human composer would. The beginning is entirely discontinuous, and doesn't really sound like a beginning. A real fugue isn't just something being played repeatedly in different intervals.

If that's the best that the program has to offer, then I'm not sure what it's accomplished. Just because it can combine complicated things doesn't mean its composed anything, because it doesn't understand the parts. If someone copied and pasted parts of great books, and then tried to weave the parts together, would the result be any good? Or even great books by the same author. Maybe that's a weak analogy though.

I feel sorry for the Slate writer if he can't tell the difference between the Bach and this noise, he's seriously missing out.

Why is it called diaspora? Seems like a very emotionally charged name for something that should probably have a neutral or fun name.

"edit: well, for some definition of work anyway."

I agree heartily.

When downloading podcasts, an activity that could be handled by a perl script and wget, iTunes likes to use my entire processor. I have no idea why, and its done so for several versions now.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that iTunes, ostensibly a music library program and music store interface, is now in charge of activating phones and tablet PCs, as well as managing their applications and shared files? Shouldn't there be a separate purpose built program for that?

Seems to fly in the face of Apple's vaunted design and organization.....

No, I have not. All of her songs sound the same to me, the repeated nonsense stuttering included. And I say this as a person who as listened to thousands of hours of techno/electronica/drum and bass.

Most people just use Facebook to do what they might with a Twitter account. I would say comments, likes, and above all it being built into something that they already have is what gets people to actually use it.

It's interesting to me how everyone who disagrees with this ruling keep acting like the justices are extremely confused and decided through some convoluted mental process that corporations are pretend-people.

Lets look at the First Amendment, shall we?

"Congress shall make no law"..."abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

Hmm... doesn't say you have to be a person. In fact it seems to just say, Congress can't make a law... abridging speech. Not speech by people, or speech by companies, or speech by the media. Just speech. As in, anyone can say whatever. Especially about politics.

Justice Kennedy brilliantly points out: '"If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." He also noted that since there was no way to distinguish between media and other corporations, these restrictions would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, books, television and blogs.' (via Wikipedia)

Honestly I'm not sure what's going to change... rich people and unions already dump money into politics, through various means.

What a fucking joke!

Because there aren't thousands of different types of PCs of every shape and size, tablet, netbook, professional laptop, gaming laptop, gaming desktop, small form factor desktop, workstation...

All of these computers could run OS X, but Apple doesn't want them to.

And lest we forget, Gruber's job is to talk up Apple('s stock price). Why anyone should take his opinion seriously is beyond me. He has a vested monetary interest in Apple fanboyism.

One thing we can all rest assured of is that every Obama voter, in fact, every liberal voter of our modern times is an enlightened, fair minded, and informed individual making the best choices possible, and have risen above base human instincts like psychological biases.

Can I get a hip internet liberal high five?

This article is not only a content-less unoriginal smear, its Not-Hacker-News.

If they set an extremely low price or even gave away Windows, would that not make Office seem more expensive by comparison?

I love the comments here and elsewhere... MS sets the price of Windows 7 around or a little lower than the price of Leopard, and everyone makes smart remarks about "no family pack" and "it would cost $4 bajillion to upgrade my houses 8 family computers". I feel sorry for MS now... even when they do something nice, they're still wrong.

Comparisons to Snow Leopard are particularly unfair... If you don't pay the full price for Snow Leopard, you paid the full price for Leopard! How is that actually cheaper again?

Not to mention the fact that Apple can freely move costs among its hardware and software because they're selling all of it, for example charging more for RAM and less for OS X. MS has to make the money on its software.

-- A happy XP user since 2001, who supports and can use any other newer operating system, but likes XP.

Should it mean anything that the majority of these would be less than a year or two of one students out of state tuition? Can we say completely symbolic?

Because netbooks have a completely new kind of display? Included in that cost is (presumably) the cost of developing a display that looks nice and holds an image without battery, and the cost of setting up new manufacturing lines for it.

Its still a little cheaper than the iPod Touch was originally, isn't it?

And you could make a similar point about almost any other time someone is said to be afraid of change... that's why I'm making fun of it.

On the other hand, a lot more people die from cold, so if you decrease that, it could be a net win...

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/global-warming-the-grea...

Let me be even more sarcastic and snide... maybe people who are afraid of global warming are close minded and afraid of change...

He did make more than a billion dollars shorting the Bank of England...

Pure psycho-babble.

"If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon."