OK, great but this initiative lays the groundwork to outsource certain medical specialities like radiology and pathology to lower cost countries. Why is this a good way to spend tax money?

It is common knowledge that the chicken came first. It is also common knowledge that as a result the egg invented foreplay.

Thanks a lot dude, you just killed the sex-bot industry.

So the decision tree becomes: Imagine what you can do with one (1) anemic hippyish "car" - or - five, yes fellas you heard that right, that's five (5!!!!!) plasma TVs!!!!! Decisions, decisions.

Wonder how long will it be before somebody does precisely that to FaceBook's new panic button?

Actually, Hanuman built the bridge to Lanka.

Taliban has PhotoShop. Maybe time to tighten those software export restrictions?

So Apple has taken a play from Spinal Tap's playbook and use knobs that go to 11? The mind boggles.

Because it's hard to find serial killing rapist mice?

OK, if you say so. But some (all) of that had to be un- and re-learnt with Vista and 7, not to mention Office 2007 so I wonder how significant it really is. I think it's more like that's the way most computers come out of the box and people learn to live with it. If cheapo Dell boxes came with Snow Leopard or Linux people would learn to live with that too.

So those noise making things that we heard at the World Cup actually were a sign of intelligence?????

As far as Trade Secret goes: Shazam's own Avery Wang published the ins and outs of the Shazam algorithm in Proceedings of the ACM back in 2006. The paper also mentions similar systems by Phillips and others that go back to 2001 and beyond. There's also a reference to a talk by Shazam's Avery Wang at an international conference in Baltimore in 2003. They've plastered their secret sauce for all the world to see for years, and now they fuck with this poor guy!

Ironically, the example in the ACM article was the Beatles song "Let it be". That's precisely what I would suggest Shazam does.

cost != value

Sounds very good to me but is that really what's happening? iPhone has its SDK, Android has its own SDK etc. etc. Sadly the newer platforms appear to be as much "walled gardens" as the old ones.

Good point. So maybe an important part the project should be a "lint" utility that reads some form of standardized blueprints and other specs and issues warnings when a "hipster-home" is in violation of local and national building codes, health regulations etc. and maybe even laws of physics?