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.

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.