Don't be dramatic. Google is not going to replace SMTP.

They're just going to require your email recipients first be added to one of your Google+ circles.

I'm pretty sure I read this same story on Slashdot sometime in 2003...

On iOS that functionality seems to be part of the OS rather than built into specific apps - at least it's worked in every app I've tried it in.

This should be interesting...

Is Slashdot REALLY the place you think you'll get the best advice on this topic? I expect you're mostly going to hear from people who expect everything available for free.

In any case - do you know for sure piracy is causing significant issues for you? Just because something IS available on torrent sites doesn't mean that's where everyone who was a print subscriber is getting it now. I tend to believe a lot of people that download torrented stuff are only doing so because it's available for free - they have zero interest in buying it, and in the old days would never have been one of your print subscribers.

iTunes manages to sell a lot of music without protecting it at all, for example. Maybe you're thinking about it backwards - rather than focussing on making it hard to get at your content, instead think "how can we deliver this content in a compelling, visually interesting, easy to navigate way? People who were inclined to pay for "print" may very well be inclined to pay for continued access to that expertise, if they feel they're getting their money's worth.

Dozens of posts will be made in this discussion where people will manage to mention that they have well above average spatial reasoning skills.

I know this will happen because of my highly developed spatial reasoning skills - it gives me great insight into human behavior.

Be fair - it's hard to think up cogent analogies for other situations when you're inside a welded box that's been encased in concrete.

I'm surprised he's got any Internet access in there at all, frankly. I'll have to figure out how that happened before the next time.

Those entries aren't "suggestions" - they are instructions I want search engine spiders to unquestionably follow.

Whether they sold the XBoxes at a loss or not with respect to the cost of manufacture, they didn't set their price anywhere near the point where it could undercut the competition (or even match it, if you compare its cost to what you got, hardware wise, for the price of a PS3). And, really, that's what matters - how is it priced versus what's already out there?

With Surface RT, Microsoft deliberately chose a premium price. The base tablet sold for exactly the same price as an iPad; but then the good keyboard cover added another $100+ - and we've all seen the commercials, you apparently need that cover! So you pay $600+ for a non-"Retina" screen and not much more available memory than a $499 iPad - which was already entrenched and pretty much owned the market. How does that make any sense whatsoever?

If you've never heard of them, how can you state unequivocally that they were "a great resource"?

The what shut down, exactly?

I went with the first computer I actually owned, which had 16MB if I remember correctly - however this iPad has 32GB, and there's no 2000 option...

But I used personal computers for school and work earlier than that. First one was a Trash-80 of some sort; but it was pimped out with a whopping 64K! (again, IIRC)

The very first computer I ever used, though, was a PDP 11/40. I have no idea how much memory it had - but It handled Star Trek just fine.

Except for Root, of course. Like all high-functioning sociopaths, she started out on Windows but moved on to Linux.

Most of my wife's cop shows seem to exclusively show fictional hardware that has the Microsoft logo cut into the back of the desktop monitors and the laptop displays, along the lines of Apple's "apple". And when they use a phone, it's always a Windows phone.

Finch and Reese are both using Mac kit, though, while their nemeses are on Windows - that's good enough for me.

Taking my tongue back out of my cheek... It used to be said that Apple refused to pay for placement, but got a lot of free exposure anyway because TV and movie folks just liked Macs. However lately I often notice a lot of obvious Mac hardware where the show producers/directors went to some pains to make sure there's no glowing Apple...

Maybe they're afraid they'll take a further PR hit if a few million of these sit on eBay with a "Buy It Now" price of $29.99... and still nobody is buying them.

Problem is you've got it backwards. The problem wasn't from the point of view of Apple's license... it was from the GPL end. It was a VLC developer that requested it be removed.

There is lots of GPL licensed software on the iOS App Store - Apple doesn't care at all.

Now if you believe the GPL is incompatible with Apple's licenses AND if you think somehow that is Apple's problem... well, then, Ballmer had a point when he referred to the GPL as a "cancer".