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Comment A Question (Score 1) 232

What is it about Mersenne Primes that makes finding a new one worth $100k? Is there an intrinsic value to the number or is it just one of those things that are so hard to do, like running a world's record hundred meters, that the effort and talent to do it merits a rewarded?

Comment AdSweep != AdBlock+ (Score 4, Informative) 207

Downloaded the latest Chrome Beta (3.0.195.4), installed AdSweep, failed to be impressed. AdSweep loads ads the first time you visit a page in a session then erases them, highly annoying. The biggest problem I had was that I failed to notice any speed difference between Chrome and Firefox 3.5.2 on the sites I visit. If anything my non-scientific observation was that with AdSweep loaded, Chrome was significantly slower than Firefox.

Comment Re:iTunes The Real Problem (Score 1) 376

Some of you are saying: so don't use it, media monkey or some other program manages it just as well. That may be true, but its not the whole story. I'm talking about syncing with other apps not just with the iPod functionality in iPhone. What about syncing my calendar, or my contacts? Or syncing an application that reads and writes office documents? And look I've tried a bunch of stuff Media Monkey, Double Twist etc, and all of them either require some other BS (DT requires an account with them, it won't just run locally, MM actually requires an install of iTunes for the driver, DT may too). And I still have to have iTunes to back up my apps and data.

Additionally, nothing is seamless because APL tries to lock everything out, everything is going through some back door, its a kludge. Instead of one application to worry about I have two. APL needs to publish an interface and let people write to it for syncing, tune management, even sales of apps. Why couldn't the iTunes store let other apps access their content?

Comment iTunes The Real Problem (Score 5, Informative) 376

I love my iPhone, I wouldn't trade it. But my biggest problem is not the software the phone runs (or doesn't run), its being locked in to using iTunes. I hate it, I want to use something else, but Apple has locked me out. Don't want me to run stuff on the phone because the network (ATT) does not want to support it? I almost understand that. Don't want me to run software you haven't checked to make sure the user experience it up to par? Really? Don't want me to use software of my choice to allow two pieces of hardware I own to interact with each other (PC to iPhone)? That's pretty evil.

Comment Companies Don't Pay Tax (Score 1) 1142

That was only the first of many companies that will vote with its feet. You can't propose enormous increases in taxation without consequences. Besides, businesses don't pay tax. Never have and never will, its just a pass through. Oh I know about all the demand curve arguments, quantity demanded is simply lower (because price is higher) and the tax companies actually pay is a function of how inelastic the demand curve is. The more inelastic the more of the tax they can pass through.

But think about it. 1) Every dollar in tax paid by a company came from a consumer ultimately. 2) If the company is unable to fully pass through the price increase necessary to compensate for the tax increase and quantity demand decreases, who takes it in the neck? That's right, costs must be cut and that usually means layoffs. So a large group of consumers are going to bear the tax in the form of price increases or a small group will bear the tax in the form of layoffs.

So to this case, either Ballmer finds a way to avoid what is effectively a tax increase, or his customers and employees will pay it.

Comment Real Time Conversation Tool (Score 1) 197

We already have a ubiquitous, real time conversation tool that allows us to communicate simultaneously with multiple people in a "team". We can use it just about anywhere, any time and get to just about anybody. Its called a phone, its already in your pocket. I am amazed by my 19 year old college student son. I ask him, "Did you talk to ?" The answer is always that he had an extended conversation, but it was by text or FaceBook. What gives? I find you can accomplish more, in a more nuanced manner, in a 2 minute phone conversation, than in 20 minutes of texting, emailing or waveing.

Comment You, Sir, are not the first... (Score 1) 987

...or most notable "vicitm" of book piracy. In the 19th century, Americans waited dockside for copies of popular English books to arrive and an American edition would be published within hours with no royalties paid to the author. An excellent example of this was the 1823 release of Sir Walter Scott's Peveril of the Peak. The reverse also happened to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, when 1.5 million copies appeared overnight in England at 6p each without any payment to Stowe. In consequence, Sir Scott and Ms. Stowe are household names, while you, alas, are not. Somehow the world, literature, culture and commerce survived literary piracy in the past. Not only survived, but the output from that time to this has increased exponentially. I'm sure we'll figure out how to get by this time too.

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