You mean an app market whose sole audience is made up of people who have already resigned themselves to shelling out more money than other people will generate more revenue? Mind. Blown.

Keep in mind that these complaints are from the same guy who followed tens of thousands of people on Twitter and complained when Facebook wasn't allowing him to add more than 5,000 friends on Facebook. If he joined an e-mail mailing list with 35,000 subscribers, he would probably complain that mailing lists as a whole are too noisy and write them off as useless. Now that he's dealing with something that requires more attention to actual individual people, he finds it harder to deal with. Well, duh.

Sure it's noisy on the public waves, but they're public. Everyone is using it all at once... hundreds of people at a time. That's not going to be the main way people use Google Wave. Right now more people are using the public waves because they want to interact with other Wave users, and all their friends aren't on Wave yet.

Sorry, but I hate the math in Mr. Greco's quote. It's like saying, "Wow, look how high the murder rate is in Washington D.C.! Washington D.C. is 0.00003% of the surface of the earth. Imagine how much murder there is in the rest of the world!"

Who the hell cares? It's like saying, "hitting yourself in the head with a brick will get you to sleep faster than counting sheep." Yes, they both get you to sleep, but take a guess which one I'd rather do.

In essense there are an awful lot of numbers, and a very tiny number of numbers that account for useful content. The act of discovering new numbers that are good is very time consuming (eg: Filming a Movie/Writing Software) and deserves payment.

Who would pay you for the number 17? Who would pay you for the number that is the source code for Windows 10?

You are confusing property with value. The number that is the source code for Windows 10 has value. However, the length or complexity of the number does not change whether or not you can treat it like property.

When you boil the matter down to its essence, digital content is simply a bunch of very long numbers. You can't treat numbers like property. Imagine trying to treat the number 17 as property. It doesn't work.

Factor in online sales and I think this percentage would be significantly less.

Why not a laptop, you ask?

Because a laptop battery doesn't last for two weeks.
Because a laptop screen can't be read from any angle.
Because a laptop is much heavier than a Kindle.
Because a laptop doesn't have always-on, free Internet access.

Because a laptop is not a book reader.

I like how it takes into account solar flares that knock out GPS reception, and signal reflection in the city that causes location jumps, and non-public roads that shouldn't be taxed, and size and weight of the car as related to the actual effect the car has on the roads, and, and, and....

I don't know how strong my point will be here, since I haven't bothered to look up the data, but I wonder....

How many of the companies Google has bought out were publicly-traded companies? From first look, it doesn't seem like that many at all. And if that's the case, then the companies that sold out to Google, did so of their own volition and not because they were beholden to their public investors to make a decision that would make more money for the investors.

I don't see why this is such a showstopper for other book scanning projects. Right off the top of my head I can think of three methods of dewarping book scans that have nothing do to with Google's methods. While Google's method is definitely quite interesting and seems like a great solution, it is by no means whatsoever the only way of accomplishing this.

This astounds me. These numbers only represent a few companies. Consider that it would take about 5,790 yottabytes* to store a 150lb human body (at a byte per atom). Now consider that people keep in their pocket more storage than existed on the planet 30 years ago. So in another 30 years.... wow. Just think about that for a minute.

* giga tera peta exa zetta yotta

I can see what's trying to be said, but look at games like Portal. They took a simple concept, portals, and built an entire game around this one simple idea. Sure the game is not long, but it's a brilliant game. It's loved by almost every single person who plays it. Not just enjoyed... loved. And if you listen to the commentary while playing the game, you can really see just how much thought and effort they put into even this simple game.

I just don't see the problem with this. Game creators should continually try to innovate. No, they're not always going to hit their mark, but occasionally they will totally nail it, like with Portal, and gaming as a whole will take one more step forward. That's a Good Thing.

This "protest" could, on the other hand, give Google some really good material from which to refine their click fraud detection algorithms. They know the click-fraud is coming, and they can use it as a chance to collect even more accurate data about how the click fraud is being perpetrated.

I can't tell if this is win-win for everyone or not. The protesters get to have their protest, Google comes away with better click fraud detection, and the advertisers subsequently get better results for their money spent. Who's losing here?

Those must have been huge additional programs. In a default install of Windows 7 (not trimming or adding any features from the default install ISO from Microsoft) I was able to install Windows 7 on my Dell Mini's 16GB SSD with zero problems and I still had 5.7GB free at the end of the install. Even with Microsoft Office 2007 installed, I still have 4.5GB free. Coupled with a 16GB SD card in the media card slot, I'm doing just fine for space on my 16GB Dell Mini.