Friendly reminder:

Google's services aren't free. Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, all the other "services" you're referring to aren't their services. Google sells advertising.

I happened upon this website a few years ago while looking for something else:

http://www.kids-in-mind.com/

It's definitely got a Christian bias, but the way they describe movies, and how appropriate they are for kids is pretty objective, and allows a parent to know what's in a movie without giving away any/many plot details. Here's an example from the Captain America review:

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - This World War II Era film includes many scenes of gunfire, military vehicles shooting cannons, soldiers firing on the enemy, falling bodies, men carried on stretchers, exploding grenades and bombs with smoke and fire; there is little blood. A man flicks a cigarette lighter, blowing up a piece of equipment, and then shoots another man in the chest (we see three dots of blood over the heart and he dies).

They rate each film according to Sex, Violence, and Language "quotients" so you can see at a glance how much violent or sexual content has. And, being that it's such a conservative group doing the reviews, they tend to include things like kissing or hand holding, which many might not find offensive, but some probably would.

This may be true, but if my credit info wasn't among the 675,000, then could i really say that this guy was responsible for my plight?

Not been the victim of id theft/fraud much?

4 columns for igoogle is back! It's been back for weeks or months, at least. I'm a huge fan, and was also very upset when they went to 3 columns max. With about 15 tabs with 100+ feeds on each one, it was rough with 3 columns.

a lot of these issues are addressed in this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCP8kiL3jhA

ok, so no one converts feet to miles or back on a regular basis. it's not uncommon to deal strictly in inches, though. say you have something that's 27 and 15/16 inches long. you have to divide it into four equal pieces. how long are the shorter pieces?

now imagine the thing is 275 milimeters. how long are the four pieces now?

Is it too soon to start complaining about the complaints about the complainers?

Isn't the GP's point similar to the idea that the new US dollar bills with the larger portraits and watermarks are supposed to discourage counterfitting. If merchants and banks are still accepting the old, easier to counterfit bills, then counterfitters will just print those instead of the newer ones...

This was my first thought as well.

1. make friends with truants.
2. collect their GPS devices.
3. enter codes when called to do so.
4. profit.

I don't have any background in this, but am completely fascinated by the AI implications of CAPTCHA busting bots/tech.

I wonder if the "there can't be enough photos" issue could be solved by a script/pulling photos from a large set of images from the web itself? ie, a flickr stream/group that is specifically tagged by users for this, to contribute to the pool for image use by a presumably OSS type CAPTCHA system...

hey, do i know you?

I might not be int he market for buying anything directly from BP, but asking my local gas station where their gas came from and then boycotting the BP gas is a viable way to avoid BP gas. If the current gas in the tank is from BP, avoid that station. If it's not BP gas, "fill'er up".

It's not as if gas stations buying BP gas somehow takes away my ability to find out the source of the gas I'm trying to buy. And I've heard that margins for local gas stations are paper thin. I'm sure more than a few customers asking "is this BP gas? yes? ok, thanks. I'll be back when you have some non-BP gas" could result in the local gas stations not buying gas from BP anymore.

I don't think either of them started doing it as a way to make a living. It's definitely more about the art. Any money that comes in just goes back into the projects. It's a labour of love to be sure. I figure by answering the question with links when it comes up, I can a)expose them to more folks who are interested in the music/model, and b)inspire more people to experiment with unique distribution models.

I don't run either of them, but I'm friends with the people who do. They are both fairly new, with Quote and Unquote being a few years old if memory serves.

The model is still new enough that the answer to your question is "Not right now" but the support for them is incredible, and they have the model of "pay what you can if/when you can, otherwise download it for free." no strings attached.