By all means, let's watch people who like to hear themselves talk about insights they achieved on the can and re-sell to us at $5,000 a pop ... man, we are idiots to pay to listen to them talk and or treat them like oracles ...

Is it just me or does it seem like the bland and boring speakers of TED just like to hear themselves talk and make powerpoint presentations? What's that thing been running on? 20 years now? What have they actually contributed to society except hot air - isn't it just rich dweebs who get thousands to stand up and talk about how smart and great they are? And people pay thousands to hear a talk about them climbing a mountain? It was probably cool 20 years ago before the internet but now? Aren't rhey basically just the Davos group except they wear Birkenstocks? Look, if rich guys want to get together to pat themselves on the back, great but do we need to fawn upon them?

Clip from 1995 CNET TV show about first bank on internet.

(Kids, gather round - it's the internet when it was all gray!)

http://www.youtube.com/v/EwPvjnEK32c

Of course, it's Windows-based so you know it'll be 100% accurate and never crash on you ... yea, this will end well.

yep, hilarious - wonder what the show & the singers thought TOKE meant?

some verb - like 'step'?

The problem is letting the lawyers run the business - they could care less about goodwill, advertising or marketing because that would be like asking a 5-year old kid whether a Roth IRA is better than a regular IRA. They just do NOT get that at all. They live in a world where "regular' words are TOO complicated so they invent LEGAL definitions and each word only has ONE meaning ... that is how they see the world. WIN. LOSE. GUILTY. NOT GUILTY. THat is how they define the world so either you are violating trademarks or you're not ... there is no middle ground ... because that would be too FREAKIN' complicated otherwise to their feeble minds.

So, the only reason the phone agree to wiretapping is the income they can make from it ... so instead of trying to talk the white house out of anything, all you have to do is tack on 10 words to another bill that in effect says something to the effect of "wiretap reimbursement is capped at $99 per line." or expand it out further, "reimbursement is at billed rate after indictment & conviction, $99 maximum reimbursement per line without indictment & conviction." Then we'll see how willing the phone companies are in joining random fishing expeditions.

didn't our ancestors from way, way, way back come from the sea ... if people eat monkeys, what's the big deal here ... with the face, you know it's fresh. Let's eat!

Some advantages to aging ... now, I'm too weak to pull myself up a bathroom stall ...

There was a great special on the SCIENCE channel (part of Discovery Channels) called IF WE HAD NO MOON (now out on DVD).

The eyes thing is the least our worries - apparently no tides and worse, Earth would violently wobble and spin as we rotated so we would move from pole to equator to another pole, etc ...

The moon is receeding about 2" away from us every year and in about 250,000 years (or so), it would drift so far away, we'd need a replacement moon ...

http://shopping.discovery.com/product-52214.html

The subscription music model is compelling to about 2 million Americans' or about .74% of Americans and that is the extent of it. They have given it away for free at colleges and launched it at $7.99 and companies like Yahoo, Real, MS, Creative, MTV, Rolling Stone have all tried their hand at it and - they basically take away share from that 2 million TOTAL population - why? The people who like music enough to listen but NOT to own is 2 million people. The people who want to play professional DJ with tracks they do not own is 2 million people.

People can pay $10 a month for professional comercial free radio from satellites.

People can essentially listen for free on the internet or something called a radio to professonally programmed tracks.

Or the reason iPods and a few other DAP's are popular because people do NOT want to listen to "professionally" programmed stations and prefer either to listen to music they already know OR to check in on community sites and add new music.

iTunes has sold 3 BILLION tracks not because people woke up one day and said, humm, I'd really like some DRM and after carefully analysis with friends and colleagues, I have decided Fairplay is the best ... rather, it's the SIMPLEST choice because even "free/illegal" tracks from p2p sites are not always the simplest (downloading ... 2 days and 17 hours ...) or just spend $.99 and have in 2 minutes and it's smart enough to sync and load onto my player.

The music industry is bizarrely afraid of Apple & iTunes for NO REASON. Because if tomorrow, iTunes store was shut down, how many iPod owners would not know how to load music or not learn by surfing the internet in 3 minutes?

iTunes is not exclusive anything - just look at the new Amazon store - you can launch a new music store in days or weeks (if you had enough money & servers) but WM sells 25% of CD's in the US - in most towns, how many people are willing to open a new store to compete against them?

The music industry seems to love the physical CD for some reason even though it has no DRM (harder to track to pay royalties?) and loathes and is scared of digital ... WTH?

We are morons. We will keep buying the same stuff as long as its convenient. We will pay $2 for $.11 of tap water in a bottle because it's cold and 2 feet away from us instead of walking 10 feet to drink from a fountain ... JUST SELL IT TO US!

removable media is fine for a camera but who wants to look around for your card with those songs or that movie on it - wouldn't you rather have a falsh drive on your PSP?

Why would you want staticky radio when you have an ipod? You can download podcasts of music.

And yea, flash - that's all we need while using a portble internet browser - waiting for the dancing hamster to finish. People say a lot of things without thinking through why they want them - look, not everyone needs an ipod or iphone but don't dreg up minor issues (You mean no seat warmer?) - clearly, the majority of people live fine without them.