They still compete! --granted, it's now called Trickle Down Competition, where companies race to bring their products, service, and general quality downward fastest, instead of upward...but they still compete! And now you can Join The Conversation(tm) on Google+.

The truckload of validation errors in iTunes web pages (to continue down the Call Me Maybe path, I checked the page for the album) don't help. The page has all the keywords it would need and is fairly well structured, so any search-placement improvements would have to come from valid HTML and fetid SEO.

But yeah, Google and friends can treat that problem by calling up Apple and negotiating to link iTunes directly to the crawler, something like how Google and Adobe got all loveydovey and *wham* now Google can read Flash. (I said treat; the cure would be to make the song files downloadable from the page, if for a fee, and be done with the whole RIAA love and general non-webbyness of iTunes and whatnot.)

Just make sure you can raise the child you two make after the dinner. :)

The real story here is that "Italian Parents Assocation" is a thing.

*whirrrrrrrrrr* *tick tick*

Only problem is that somewhere along the way we elected Toydarians to Congress and our boards-of-directors. Tell one of them to do a true switch to metric, and they'll give you a nice and resounding LOL before mumbling "stupid job-killing regulations" and other such incantations.

The front cover would say "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" in front of a cute, if anguished, infant.

Really, though, you can't just run a public server, shove a truck of data through it (77 TB, jeez) and not expect the Nickel & Dime Department to show up. Verizon was being ridiculously generous (compared to the other data-miser ISPs lately, anyway), and this was abuse and against the TOS--i.e., Why We Can't Have Nice Things.

Truth, all of that, of course.

My favorite part is where everyone here's modding down the wise posts as Trolls. But 'ey, if y'all prefer Facebook 2: +ElectricBoogaloo over federation and XMPP, and ridiculous "abuse" excuses over sensible free software download systems, then I don't have all the time in the world to try to steer the USS Consensus closer to the HMS Sense.

Out there in Mars, that rover's more likely to find a Charles Schwab center and end up owing a consultant money.

No. They'll just demand 50 years of SAP experience.

Plus between trade secrets and accounting wonkery there's simply no way for anyone short of a spy behind a Bloomberg terminal to have an idea what'll happen.

In brief, this article is SOP for the Lobster.

The secret isn't really magic, it's magnet--18 magnets to be exact!

I am just worried that Google is trying to do more to force us to use their tools, rather than allowing us to use our favourite messaging clients., but with their service.

...and just a month after the FSF "commend Google for doing the right thing and respecting the importance of full federation", after they reversed a Jabber invite block they started in March as an "anti-spam" measure. I guess it's now an "anti-privacy" measure, right Google? Or is it an "anti-Facebook" one? Oh, Larry Page...

"I'm not addicted to cake rolls! I'm just trying to increase the glycan* sugar level in my mucus!"

*Not to be confused with the lycan sugar level, which is both different and much scarier.