I remember when the iPod came out and I felt it didn't come close to the elegance and beauty of my Sony Minidisc players. Immediate storage capacity was an obvious feature, although I never found carrying a few minidiscs around to be annoying. However, a major reason I've owned two iPods in my life and never bought a Minidisc player after the MZ-N1 is the point you bring up: software. Whatever bad things anyone has to say about iTunes, it cannot be compared negatively to SonicStage. I could even have lived with it's "convert from MP3s on the fly or convert your whole library to something nothing else could play" aspect, if it wasn't so riddled with bugs I'd be lucky to have all the graphical components of the interface show up at once (if it didn't crash).

That said, given the disposable income, I'm sure I'd buy (or import) one of the latest Sony Minidisc players, if only for the joy of great portable hardware.

I'm an Aussie, and I bear the term proudly. I am also proud of our long, rich heritage of not having sticks up our collective arses. Now an expat, I often refer to home as "Oz" and fondly tell stories like that of Bob Dwyer having to apologise to the Queen in 1991.

PM or not, she bloody well better be an 'Aussie' first.

According to large portions of the American people, Obama is a terrorist and G.W. Bush was retarded, so I'm not quite sure what you're trying to convey to that Australian who needs "a little self-respect".

I'll just quote the first sentence from that article:

"Despite intensified competition from fierce rivals including Microsoft Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Apple Inc.’s iTunes store in 2010 managed to hold onto its dominance in the U.S. market for movie electronic sell through (EST) and Internet video on demand (iVOD), new IHS Screen Digest research shows."

Wait, one more quote from the 3rd paragraph:

“The iTunes online store showed remarkable competitive resilience last year in the U.S. EST/iVOD movie business, staving off a growing field of tough challengers while keeping pace with an dramatic expansion for the overall market,” said Arash Amel, research director, digital media, for IHS. “Apple faced serious competition from Microsoft's Zune Video and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Store, as well as from Amazon and—most significantly—Wal-Mart."

Remember, when you're talking about a monopoly, you're talking about competition in the market. If iTunes has managed to attract a majority of consumers in a market rife with competition, then one can only cry monopoly after digging up anti-competitive practices that specifically play a larger factor than normal consumer choice.

Interestingly, I spent a few years as a vegetarian and then vegan, and the concept that it was wrong to kill animals for food was never a convincing argument for me. I have issues with how certain industries generally go about it in the USA (along with many, more practical reasons), but the actual raising and slaughter of animals has always seemed like something one just feels is wrong or doesn't. It makes for an interesting ethics topic, because how can one debate the ethics of something that a person simply believes or not.

Or for any purpose other than procreation. Any Christian attack on homosexual sex is pretty much an attack on modern heterosexual sex, unless you adhere to the obvious strict guidelines.

It also says you shouldn't do a ton of things that are listed as being just as bad, and many of these things are pretty much universally ignored. It's true, accepting homosexuality as who one is makes it unlikely to repent the sin incurred, but not anymore than ignoring any one single thing listed as a sin or wrong (one is unlikely to repent for actions, or lack of actions, never brought into the conscious mind as a source of damnation).

One thing seems likely to me: a truly omnipotent God would unlikely ever be understood or interpreted by mortal minds like ours. To support your point about God changing his mind on humans deserving death, well, he could have done a bit more in that area.

The death and ressurrection of Jesus is a pretty important facet of the Christian faith. I think you'll need more than a few passages from one book to argue your point, especially when so many other explanations for Jesus having to die on the cross have been debated well. Are you dismissing the "original sin" as relevant to the topic? What about the fact that humans all, even after Jesus died as a sacrifice, still die (a post-Adam/Eve phenomenom, which could easily have been changed back by God after the death of Christ). What about any number of other suggestions backed by picking out statements made by other biblical figures in other books?

I'd be more interested to see an app that installs a button that, if pressed, pledges the user's support to the anti-christ after the second coming (or whatever the exact specifics for the unforgivable sin are, it's been a while since I've read the details).

Debates pitting logic against god or arguing against god are one thing, but I wonder how people would respond to an app that, within the confines of "accepting" Christianity, commits the most horrendous act possible as outlined in the faith (in one click no less!).

Yes, except the opposite of "as opposed to".

As they should be. Just as vendors for other platforms should be happy to release solutions that work for theirs.