Do you mean the competition between the various Apple players?

The biggest competitor to iPods produced by Apple is not another iPod, but the iPhone. Nearly everyone carries a phone, why carry two devices?

More importantly from Apple's POV is the competition from low end android phones. They're the same price as even the cheapest iPods, and offer a whole fuck-ton more functionality to boot.

eh? in media players? what competition?

The competition is not from other dedicated PMPs, but from Android phones. Why buy an ipod when you can get one of the cheap-ass androids for the same price.

(I know, I know, joggers etc like a small light PMP, but its a vanishing market)

IIRC it was something along the lines of 50-100ms

My link said 12ms. Do you have a source for your 50-100?

yeah. just like how so-called "agave nectar" is made in almost exactly the same way as evil, evil corn syrup.

Care to elaborate on that? I thought heat / filtration was used for agave syrup production, but a far more complex series of Enzyme conversions were needed for HFCS production.

Disclaimer: I live in a country where cheap sugar & honey are abundant, so I have no pony in this race.

And Canola Oil is the world's first GMO, but somehow that doesn't stop it from showing up in every health food store even though they wouldn't be caught dead with ANY OTHER GMO.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Canola was the first commercial GMO, but unmodified Canolas are still grown.

Do you believe that once someone starts growing a genetically modified variant of a plant that the health food crowd stop eating the non-GM variants of that plant?

Your only choice for this is probably iOS, since Android's latencies are still much much higher than is required for real time audio.

Audio Latency is much better in Jelly Bean, so you're probably better off with Android given how much more hacker-friendly the ecosystem is.

You quoted the GP as "I always suspect racism", when the full context was "For things like that, I always suspect racism"

The GP sounded like a dick, and now so do you.

You say:

But your linked article says:

By Sunday night, the government said that it has already collected half of the plastic pellets that had been spilled, including 50 tons of pellets in sacks that were scooped up from the water. The government said the clean-up effort is still continuing.

“This is an ongoing process,” secretary for the environment Wong Kam-sing told reporters on Sunday, pledging to stay attentive as the situation continues to develop.

In the meantime, environmental groups praised the government for its swift response to the spill,

You're bringing up Youtube?! Why?

Youtube gave google a BIG voice in the war to define web video standards. Sure, their choice didn't win in the end, but its presence changed the state of play considerably. Youtube's strategic value is immense. Worth far more today than what google paid.

Google is good and would never sue anyone. I guess they are just looking for some more FRAND abuse smackdown.

Defensive (or even retaliatory) litigation is not looked at as unkindly as patent trolling (or other common abuses of the patent system)

Google will learn this is the worst 12.5b anyone ever spent.

Uh-huh. Google's a pretty smart company, I recollect the number of slashdot armchair analysts who say they'd regret the price they paid for youtube. I think the MM buy is going to work out just as well for them.

Wow! You're a moron.

A billion huh? And you couldn't even provide one? Anyway, to reply to the gist of your post:

1) I am most decidedly not a fan of Monsanto.

2) You're lying. Your quote is from this page and when not altered by you, reads:

In GM crops and foods derived from them, introduced proteins are usually present only in minute amounts.

This quote is talking about GM foods in a general (and even future) sense.

1) You've moved the goalposts from vegetarian to vegan.

2) Round up ready crops have bacterial genes, not porcine genes inserted into them.

So, based on the evidence you've provided, your statement "No real vegetarians" is both false and stupid.

Hate to break this to you chump, but a tiny bit of pig DNA doesn't turn a corn cob into an animal.

Anyone who complains will be called a homophobe and sent for re-education.

What a load of shit. If anyone was walking around slapping bottoms, they would be dismissed on complaint regardless of the gender or sexuality of anyone involved.

You're a fucking idiot.

No, it was a knee jerk downmod of some thoughtful idiot who was making sense in a rational, logical yet fair manner. My knee jerked so badly I accidentally clicked an upmod. It was purely unintentional, I promise.