I think early access to stories and removing ads are big features some people would pay for. Customized searching and reporting, free/discounted classified ads, PDF/ebook formats for downloading to mobile devices, etc. I don't know if these add up to a viable business model or not, but I can see how they would be worth a modest subscription price to some users.

I think the bigger problem with news is that the internet (and on a smaller scale before that, cable) has divided the market so that instead of reading one newspaper, many users now read dozens of news sites. So asking $20/month from each user is now completely unreasonable. Maybe users feel like any given site is worth only $1/month. That's great if you're a blog with at most a handful of staff and some hosted webservers. But it sucks if you're a traditional newspaper with hundreds of staff and a rapidly declining readership.

The way things have been going the last few years, I suspect that a lot of the free high-quality news sites are going to go out of business, or be forced into larger and larger merged corporate entities. Maybe it'll be easier to setup profitable paywalls and/or premium services when there are only five news sites all under the same profit pressures. Or maybe it'll be easier to convince people to pay $20/month when they get a full suite of news, entertainment, sports, etc. sites -- in short when the conglomeration of internet content has turned it into TV.

-Esme

The local paper (Gainesville Sun) had a picture of the skimmer on the first day it was found:

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100707/ARTICLES/100709681

Basically it looks like a thin bundle of electrical tape attached to the wire between the magstripe reader and the circuit board inside the gas pump -- completely hidden inside the pump cabinet unlike ATM skimmers.

-Esme

My wife has an iPhone and we're getting a 3G iPad, and I'm really pleased with this. For the iPad, I expect to use the 3G only occasionally, so being able to upgrade to 2GB for $25 seems like a better deal than unlimited for $30. My wife uses nowhere near 200MB a month, so she'll be able to cut her data plan price in half. I wish she could have the iPad data plan, instead of having to pay $15 for each 200MB if she goes over, but you can't have everything.

More importantly, I'm really glad AT&T has gotten rid of unlimited plans. Their 3G network is a finite resource, and a small percentage of users were using huge amounts of bandwidth to the detriment of all. If they want to keep doing that, they should pay more for it than normal users who just want to check email, browse websites, etc.

-Esme

This seems like the most likely outcome to me. Completely shutting off access to ARM chips to everyone else would kill ARM's business and lose Apple a lot of money.

But they could probably just give themselves priority, and then they would always have the newest chips, and everyone else would be a step behind. This would give Apple a competitive advantage, but probably not make everyone else jump ship.

...between making general-purpose computers that are great for creating content, and creating limited devices for consuming that content?

Sure, the iPhone, iPad and AppleTV aren't very good general-purpose computers. They don't have the same keyboard and pointing devices. They are limited to the walled garden of approved apps. You have to buy in to Apple's other products to get the most out of them, etc. But they are great at what a lot of people are using their computers for these days -- watching TV, listening to music, browsing the web, looking at photos, etc., etc.

I don't know anyone who could have an iPad as their only computer -- even Grandma needs to upload her digital pictures somewhere, and the iPad doesn't fit the bill. But it strikes me as a great computer for hanging out and casually consuming email/web/video/photos/etc. while talking to people, watching TV, etc. This helps content creators by increasing the way people can consume their content. And that obviously helps Apple sell more MacPros.

So the whole premise of this story is bogus: why would Woz be disappointed that Apple was making devices for content consumption. How is that at odds with content creation, which was always Apple's focus?

-Esme

Not much you can do with half a finger.

Wendy's would beg to differ.

First of all, I never said I had anything more than a passing familiarity with the British tax system -- but my general point was that the vast majority of British people don't have to file tax returns (I've seen it estimated that only 10% do). So the notion of getting people in trouble for not filing tax returns makes much less sense when most people don't have to file tax returns in the first place.

Second, the rest of my post isn't "wrong" -- and you couldn't possibly know anything about it, anyway.

-Esme

I see you're not very familiar with the British tax system. My understanding is that unless you're self-employed, you don't file a tax return. Your employer takes the taxes, and you don't get them back, no matter what. You do the equivalent (registering family changes that would affect your tax due) with your employer, and they adjust the withholding accordingly.

I lived in England (while telecommuting to a job in the US) for a couple of years. And it took me 18 months to figure out that I didn't have to pay taxes in the UK on my US income. Best of all, the way I found out was that I applied for a tax number so I could fill out a tax return, and they refused to give me one. It was a little disorienting to have the British civil service tell me it didn't want to tax me...

-Esme

I think you're dead wrong. This test clearly shows the problem with the current proprietary solution: Flash video has low CPU usage on Windows because Adobe has optimized for that platform, but high CPU usage on Macs because they haven't bothered for that platform. And because it's a proprietary plugin, if Adobe doesn't want to fix this problem, neither Apple nor anyone else can do anything about it.

Having a standards-based solution, with multiple open source implementations means that anyone can add the GPU offloading for Macs.

-Esme

Several people have mentioned good resources (museums, local government, geography dept., etc.). I'd add university libraries to that list (especially the maps or special collections departments). But the most important thing is location. Since you don't want to move the maps more than necessary, and if the maps are of your local area, then the library/museum/government in your area will be most interested in them.

For geocoding the maps, I think you'll need to figure out what you're going to do with them. If you want to do overlays in Google Earth, then using KML will probably be the best. If you want to use some other GIS software, then whatever formats it accepts, etc.

I think this is the only way to prevent orphan works. And this argument is simple: if your book/film/song/etc. is "intellectual property", shouldn't you have to pay "intellectual property taxes"?

I think the thing you are not considering is that we are currently paying both ways: researchers pay page fees to publish, and their institutions pay subscription fees so the researchers, grad students, etc. can access the journals. Both of these payments come mainly from the same place: research grants from major government science agencies. The researchers get grants and include publishing costs. The researchers' institution taxes the grants ("overhead fees") which generally gets distributed to the library who purchases subscriptions.

So, if all grant-funded research was publicly available, and researchers had to pay higher publishing fees, but the library had to pay lower (or no) subscription fees, it all balances out to roughly the same amount of money. And it's better to have the researchers doing all the payment, so funding agencies can limit the amount of publishing costs they will fund. What do you think the big journal publishers will do if NIH and NSF suddenly say all grant-funded research must be open access from day 1, and they will only fund publishing costs up to $50/page? They will have little choice but to live with lower revenues.

-Esme

I suppose you've looked over their statistics, then? Or maybe you're just completely ignorant of behavioral sciences where a significantly larger sample size usually indicates poor design, lack of understanding of statistics, or a fishing expedition?

Many kinds of experiments require large sample sizes, either because of small effects or large amounts of variance in the population being studied. But not everything needs a large sample. And using a large sample where a small one will do is just wasteful.

I am all in favor of helping out people who don't have healthcare, but in order for those people to have healthcare, someone else is going to get screwed.

Not necessarily. Right now, the US spends a lot more money per person on healthcare that most countries that have universal coverage. That's mostly because uninsured people wait until they're very sick or injured and then go to an emergency room. They get treated, and the hospital can't collect, so everybody else picks up the tab. So we're already getting screwed right now.

It would be much cheaper to just pay for basic doctor visits for everyone, which would prevent a lot of expensive procedures from ever happening. Our taxes might be a little higher to pay for this (different people have different ideas about how to pay for it, some want to tax rich people, or very expensive health insurance benefits, etc.). But our health insurance will be cheaper, so it'll be about even.

For education, I don't think an education at a top-50 school regardless of the price is a basic right like healthcare. There are lots of good schools that are still reasonably-priced. I think there are a lot of things we could do to make college more affordable, and I'm all in favor of that, but there are affordable options right now.

I personally think it would be great for state schools to be free in return for service (military, public service, etc.) or for a higher tax rate (which wouldn't be that much different from having student loans to pay off).

-Esme

I think the fee would have to be uncomfortably high to stop squatters. A commercial developer with a vague intention of making an app at some point might find it acceptable to pay $10, $50 or $100 to reserve good names. But how much would developers of free apps be willing to spend? Not as much, I would expect. So maybe you'd need to take donations to be able to afford the submission fee...

I think the real solution is for a human being to review submissions and either release the submitted app to the app store, or reject the submission and free up the name. There is no good reason to have the names be in limbo.

-Esme