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Which is what baffles me about asking for more than Spotify or Pandora pay. The expected revenues from the much larger OS-X/iOS user base and the persistence of the Apple brand surely would make a better business case for an equal if not lower rate.

Which leads me to suspect that Captain Megaton’s suspicions, as well as 4The LoL’s, have some substance to them: greed, hubris, protectionism.

Then again, that all depends on whether what we hear on Radio Rumour is true.

14 days ago on Apple's iRadio talks stall as Google rushes to license new music service

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What I don’t get, if it’s true, is why Sony will be insisting that Apple with its huge user base and expected revenues, should pay more than Spotify does.

That’s short-sighted and greedy, akin to the kind of paranoia and profit-madness that stalled iTunes and DRM-free downloads in years gone by.

14 days ago on Apple's iRadio talks stall as Google rushes to license new music service 1 reply 2 recommends

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Read Neuromancer just as the excitement around the text-based Internet was staring to mount, and among other things it inspired me to connect my trusty Atari ST to a Bulletin Board via a seriously slow 300Baud modem, and to seek out some clued-up Sysadmins that ran the BBs, sit at their feet in wide-eyed wonder as they predicted the perfect storm of hi-tech to come.

I keep saying it, one day there will be a perfectly safe neurological procedure to erase selected memories, so I can read Frank Herbert’s Dune Series, Roger Zelazny’s Books of Amber, and William Gibson’s techno-thrillers afresh, all over again… and again… and again…

15 days ago on 'Neuromancer' Chapters 1 through 6: Chiba City Blues

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Always wondered about:
Salaam aleikum – Peace be upon you! (Arabic)
and
Shalom aleichem – Peace be upon you! (Hebrew)

???

16 days ago on Watch this: how the letter 'x' came to represent the unknown 2 replies

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Almost all the words with the “Al-” prefix are mangled transliterations of Arabic words, al meaning “the”:

Algebra – “Al Jabr Wu Q’aaba” – solution through substitution – let the number we seek be called “X”
Algorithm – Al-Khwarizmi “native of Khwarazm,” surname of the mathematician whose works introduced
sophisticated mathematics to the West
Alchemy – Al-kimiya, the “chemistry” of the Middle Ages and early modern times
Alkali – Al-qaliy “the ashes, burnt ashes” (of saltwort, a plant growing in alkaline soils)
Alcohol – al-kuhul “kohl,” the fine metallic powder used to darken the eyelids, from kahala "to stain, paint.

16 days ago on Watch this: how the letter 'x' came to represent the unknown 3 replies 16 recommends

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Blimey.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all….

The idea was that if it kills HIV it must be strong.
In a perverse way they were right…

18 days ago on Bitter pill: life-saving HIV drugs fuel crime and addiction in South Africa 2 replies

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However, it’s used in the correct context in this headline and article.

27 days ago on Hackers get root access on Google Glass ahead of retail release (update)

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Yes, but the term will be misused and misunderstood until journalists eventually correct the general impression by discontinuing its use in headlines.

It will happen in the fulness of time – when I was a kid the Anglo-American media world of TV, Film, textbooks, atlases and press always referred to the capital of the Republic of China as Peking.

27 days ago on Hackers get root access on Google Glass ahead of retail release (update) 1 reply

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http://www.zateev.net/ontarget/bodies/pyramid.html

28 days ago on Egyptian pyramid builders consumed 4,000 pounds of meat daily

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Pretty much counters the notion that the actual builders were slaves.

Examination of the human remains is reported to reveal pretty high standards of medical care, including brain surgery!!! WTF?

They also had play dens where a lot of kinky goings-on were condoned!!! No kidding!!

Sounds more like an elite class of society built the Pyramids – the first Silicon Valley?

28 days ago on Egyptian pyramid builders consumed 4,000 pounds of meat daily 2 replies 1 recommend

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“Samsung posts slight profit drop to $7.9 billion, still beats street” – Electronista.
“Samsung Electronics profits boosted by smartphone sales” – BBC

The BBC headline and report claim record profits for Samsung, up from last year, and proceed from there to use it as a stick with which to beat Apple Inc:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22305179

Which is it to be? What’s the true report?

28 days ago on Strong smartphone sales boost Samsung to $7.9 billion profit in Q1 2013

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Thanks for this telling insight into her mind, Nicktrance – that unnerving chortle and machine-gun-rattle speech portends great and eclectic stuff to come, already evident in the likes of Yahoo Weather and Yahoo (News), the latter of which has speedily assimilated the newly-acquired Summly to great effect…

Now then, Divine Miss M, how’s about showing Google how Glasses should really be implemented?

28 days ago on Yahoo's Marissa Mayer joins Jawbone board

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It’s only coming up at this point as a way of confirming the intention of certain states to get more aggressively involved in the conflict.

All this report tells me is that the insurgents, or erm rebels, or erm freedom fighters, are suffering military setbacks that indirect aid is incapable of easily reversing, and that air power which they do not possess is needed.

If this view is true, then the next stage will be increasing reports in the UK newspapers of the chemical weapons angle (already begun) – the Foreign Office are the experts at drafting vaguely-worded UN resolutions that can assemble enough support across the board to precipitate invasion.

We know the drill: no-fly zones, coupled with night-time attempts to decapitate the regime by targetted bombings, and so on and so forth…

28 days ago on White House: intel shows Syria likely used sarin gas, but UN report is needed

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Must be frustrating to anthropologists to have to consider the possibility of their work having to include the vastness of outer space in its field of study.

Sooner or later an unmanned probe MAY well return to Earth with an archaeological and anthropological bombshell, quién sabe?.

28 days ago on Origins, unknown: where did the Maya empire really come from? 1 reply