Arg... I'm never going to get my point through the noise, so I'll just respond to you directly. The part that keeps getting omitted is that Google had its Bing tracked employees clicking on their fake result.

The accurate fast-food analogy is this: McDonalds creates a fake 'McRat Burger', then sends a group of its employees to Burger King to sign up for the King's Court Happy Club, part of which requires them to fill out surveys on fastfood habits (Bing Toolbar, and tracking). These employees are then told to consistently goto McDonalds and order the 'McRat Burger'. Burger King then receives survey results indicating that the 'McRat Burger' is hugely popular, and soon make the 'Rat Whopper Supreme' a top menu item. Now is that proof Burger King is copying McDonald's marketing data?

I'm not even saying MS isn't doing something wrong. My point is that this 'experiment' doesn't prove a thing, and to point the finger on this kind of evidence is extremely childish.

"When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."

As I have pointed out elsewhere in the thread. Google gamed the Bing toolbar by having their monitored users actually click on the these fake results! This could easily be attributed to Bing Toolbar monitoring user behavior, instead of Bing using ranking information from Google.

I have noticed that whoever brings up 'fanboi' is usually the real 'fanboi'. Perhaps that should be a new internet meme.

"When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."

This is from the source. Bing Toolbar is probably collecting user behavior. It's not necessarily being prioritized because it is the top result on Google, it is probably being prioritized because the monitored users actually clicked on those results. Maybe MS is just monitoring Google directly; I wouldn't be that surprised, but this story is pure troll.

This is just stupid... their 'proof' is that they searched and clicked results on Google using Internet Explorer, and with Suggested Search and Bing Toolbar activated... wtf. So Bing Toolbar is collecting information to improve Bing Search... shocking.

Why didn't they do this with Bing Search, then accuse MS of 'cheating' using Bing results. This is just braindead stupid; so ridiculously childish.

I do something similar, but different. I think low outlier review scores often has to do with reviewers using a point deduction scheme, which isn't all that indicative of how fun a game is.

What I do instead is I go to metacritic and note both the aggregate score for critics reviews and the aggregate score for user reviews. Critics reviews can be paid for, or sometimes nitpicky, whereas user reviews can be a gut reaction, based on superficial impressions, and susceptible to 'fanboi/hater' extremes. However, I find that the contrast between the two aggregate scores can be an indicator of shenanigans (an over-hyped game, or a flawed but really fun game)

Why? Setting aside this notion that anybody actually takes the position of 'I support lock down and customer control'. Why are you concerned?

Apple's approach doesn't preclude alternatives right? And open is better than closed right? So what's the concern? Whatever additional factors such as marketing, or fashion, anybody conveniently wants to blame for Apple's success, are these things unavailable to open products?

That's a straw-man.

'People' do not buy something 'they must jailbreak'. The vast majority buy a product that they want because it does enough of what they want for it to be worth the price. The jailbreakers do what they do because they find some enjoyment in doing it. The people who use the product jailbroken are often just messing around. They use jailbreak because the can. Those that buy a product that does not meet their need, then use jailbreak to make the product meet their need are mythical, except perhaps when there are in fact no alternatives at all.

Frankly what's really tragic is that so many people insist on whining about products they clearly don't want instead of just buying and enjoying what they do want. It's also tragic that so many keep rationalizing their 'superior' choice by denigrating others.

I only have experience with the canadian cell companies, so I don't know if this is true more generally. Pretty much every cell company here has secret hidden plans only available if you phone customer service and say the magic words 'cancel service'. Some of the bonuses available might include roaming plans. You don't get to know the real pricing unless you do the song and dance. Also, you could look for group discount plans... maybe your student union, or school has some deals available. Those should be somewhat comparable to the types of discounts you can get from a retention department.

It looks worse than the Wiimote and Nunchuck in some ways... that off-hand controller looks like ergonomics hell. The Nunchuck has the stick and buttons all comfortably accessible, the Sony equivalent has tiny buttons and a d-pad below the analog stick... and it's less contoured, looks like it could mess up your hand badly. Kind of makes me wonder what is really driving the controller design... they might be trying to make this work with existing games (or at least slightly modified versions), and I think we've seen from the Wii that that doesn't really work.

I think it's like that in games because it was regular practice to just empty the clip. I'm under the impression that during WW2, it was a regular practice to empty the clip instead of reloading. quoting from wikipedia... " In battle, the manual of arms called for the rifle to be fired until empty, and then recharged quickly. "

I have some special edition DVD of that movie... it may be all those things you say but it still cuts abruptly between scenes, and ends up a jumbled mess. I don't remember exactly, but it certainly felt like the movie takes 1hr to cover the 1/3 of the book, then 0.5hr to cover the rest.

I get the feeling that people are put off by the fact that the iPad is not what they expected. It's kind of funny that prior to Apple's announcement there was commentary about how no one has been able to make tablet computers successful, and now after the announcement, when it's clear that Apple made the 'big iPod' instead, there's all kinds of complaints that they didn't build a tablet computer.

So I'm agreeing with you and taking it further. I don't think (many, or at least the vocal ones) geeks have even figure out what the iPad is and what market it is actually going for. As support for this I would point to all of the 'It's Just a Big iPod' talk (which I suspect will be the new "Less space than a Nomad..."). It's not just a big iPod, it is a big iPod. It's a device that is fundamentally about the consumption of media. It's an iPod; a music player with access to the iTunes music store. It's a portable video player with access to the iTunes movies and tv shows store. It's an ebook reader with access to the iTunes bookstore. It's a gaming device with access to the iTunes App store.

Whether or not that's a good thing or if it will have any kind of impact is an open question, but, make no mistake about it, it is an evolution of the iPod and that's very likely what Apple intended. If it helps people get their head around it... think of the iPad as a new product in the line of iPods and AppleTV rather than Macs

That's great for some people, but personally I find the amount of options overwhelming. Same thing with computers as well. Once upon a time I would've researched parts and looked at spec sheets and read reviews to figure out exactly what to get. However, it seems like I would inevitably be slightly disappointed in the end. I think I enjoyed the process of the 'shopping' more than the final product and in the end it is the final product I have to live with. Choice is good for consumers, but I suspect there are many out there like me that will go with the one easy good choice over many possibly horrible to excellent choices.

For people like me, Apple is generally a good option. They make basically quality products with very good usability and design. The iPhone is an excellent phone and will remain an excellent phone even if products with better feature sets at lower price points exist. I know many times /. posters like to dismiss shoppers like me as being 'stupid' or 'vain' or something, but quite frankly I find a lot of those people either disingenuous or delusional when they try to argue the iPhone is selling purely on 'style' or try to compare product using purely specs.

Saying it's ridiculous is ridiculous :p

It's a perfectly valid comparison for price of entry (the only thing that matters to the vast majority of consumers). Also, this should be obvious, people buy products, and not feature lists.

I would say the assumption isn't so much based on hubris as on practical considerations. We only really know our civilization, so we can only make these kinds of conjectures based on what an advanced version of our own civilization would be like (we would so trash the place with probes). If we don't make those assumptions, then there really is no starting point to get very far on this kind of 'what-ifs'. Maybe the planets are sentient...