This is why we need more transparency in the numbers. The numbers scenario you describe could actually occur with no piracy at all. The Android Marketplace has a feature where you can buy an app and try it out for 24 hours and then return it for a full refund if you don't want it. Conceivably, 8,659 people could have bought the app and then played it for a day, but only 2,831 people ended up keeping it, meaning the developer only sees 2,831 purchases, but also sees 8,659 different score submissions to the server.

Or just name the file JavaRandomNumberSeedFile.txt or similar.

This is overly pedantic, but it's the "iPhone 4", not the "iPhone 4G". It is the 4th generation of the iPhone, so it's "4G" in that sense, but it does not make use of any 4G mobile network.

So what I want is a separate voicemail greeting or some other way of communicating status which will let me say that I'm on my goddamn way, so stop calling me to ask where I am. Because as it is right now, I can't effectively communicate the difference between this and my usual "I don't feel like taking your call." (There is a difference.)

HTC phones running Android have a feature that will let you do exactly this. You can set a pre-written text message and then when a call comes in, you can just hit the MENU button and it will send the caller immediately to voicemail and then automatically fire off the pre-written text message to the caller. Mine is set to, "Sorry, I can't take your call right this second. I'm in my car and don't have my hands-free headset." This way you can gracefully send them to voicemail, but at the same time let them know why you are doing so.

If you're Buzz box is full of spam, it means you you are following spammers. Either you suck at finding new people to follow, or your frequent contacts are spammers. Either way, "you're doing it wrong."

If you don't like what someone is posting in Buzz, don't follow them.

Nope, I'm saying if they care, they should read the instructions. I'm not saying I read all instructions everywhere, and I'm not saying every program/site provides them, but if it's something I care about (like who will see what items and information) then I look for the instructions and read them. I did it for Facebook and I do it for Google stuff.

You care enough about your privacy to have posted anonymously. If you ignored the "Post Anonymously" checkbox and I all of a sudden could see your username, you can't exactly get all pissed at Cmdr Taco for that. The lady who wrote the "fuck Google" post thought all her Reader shared items were going to all her followers. If she had her Reader set to private, they didn't go to her followers, except for those people in her followers who were already allowed to see her Reader shared items. But if she had her Reader shared items set to public, well, they're public. Anyone could already read them and they weren't private.

It still comes down to reading instructions. Even if it means reading instructions in other programs too. I meant it when I said "or hadn't already given up through other channels". Buzz doesn't magically make visible anything that you didn't already have visible. If you had your Reader shared items set to private, they stay that way, but if you had them set to public, well, they're public.

I guess this whole privacy snafu wasn't a big deal to me because I actually read their instructions.

No, the information about which settings do what weren't in 72pt type, but it's not like they were unintelligible or not there, or not presented to the user right away. But since I actually read the instructions they gave and read the dialog boxes that came up, I didn't lose any privacy I didn't want to lose (or hadn't already given up through other channels).

People just don't read. Ask any program designer. You know why so many programs have terrible help menus and help files? Because writing them is a thankless job. A fraction of a percent will actually look at the information you give them about how your program works and how to make it do what you want. If they do somehow get around to looking at the information you provide, they don't read it; they skim it for keywords and then barely read enough to try something else.

So, yes, Google could have made it more clear what was happening when you set up Buzz, but it's not like they yanked your pants down when you weren't looking.

No surprise, but the summary is wrong. True, there has been multitouch capability in recent versions of Android, but not true that no phones in the US support it. Even my HTC Hero (running Android 1.5) has multitouch built into the basic system apps like the browser and the gallery. Additionally there are apps on the marketplace that make use of multitouch, such as the Dolphin browser.

The summary should indicate that no other phones have previously had multitouch built into the system apps that Google ships with the stock OS.

It only has one eyepiece! Talk about a huge oversight for a 3D camera! With all the engineering that went into this camera, it's amazing they missed this one.

I don't think App storage is as big of a deal as people make it out to be. Yes, you can root your phone to store apps on the SD card, but in my experience, you don't need to. I don't have hard numbers, but it seems like Android apps clock in at a much smaller size than iPhone apps. Most of the apps I download tend to be between 100k to 700k, with some apps at a meg or two. As I said, I don't know how that exactly compares to iPhone apps, but I'm more than an "average" user of my phone and I've yet to run into a space limitation because of the apps I have installed.

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.