yonatron

Okay, the entire comment thread is a little tl;dr for me, so I probably just missed somebody else addressing this bit already:

“that keeping certain pieces of content out of systems like the App Store or the Android Market equates to censorship... because it doesn’t”

Of course it equates to censorship. People seem to get so confused about censorship because of the whole First Amendment thing. The fact that it’s _constitutional_ for a non-government entity to limit speech in its own venue doesn’t mean that it’s not censorship. It’s just not the kind that the courts need to worry about. Look:

Limiting speech/expression in a venue for speech/expression → censorship

Censorship when done by agents of the state in the U.S. -→ unconstitutional (except in certain specific blah blah…)

Censorship when done by private entities in their own venue → constitutional, but still censorship (and still worthy of debate (or if you’re me, endless semantic nitpicking)).

This is in response to Gregor, not Brian:

No 2008 MacBooks and only some from 2007 have GMA 950. The integrated graphics were bumped up to GMA X3100 in late 2007.

But I have no idea how big the improvement was and if it's worth trying to play Portal with them.

I think the iTunes LP thing is actually a decent idea… and am duly shocked to hear it might have come from the RIAA.

Also, why are you citing that October article about the alleged $10,000 fee to Apple to create an iTunes LP? That guy backtracked on his claim, and Apple’s since released thorough documentation for how to create the iTunes LP wrapper using HTML/CSS/JS. Certainly some bands will be able to find designers who can make an LP for less than $60,000, if they don’t go with Apple’s “handpicked third-party developer” mentioned in the GigaOm piece.

Of course there is still the question of how/whether small bands/labels can get their iTunes LP onto the store, but if it’s an open format, the cost of making them at all may not be that outrageous relative to the total cost of making the audio and static cover art.

@dlac I think the edge is screen size, along with thinness. From what I know of the Kindle DX’s PDF display, it would be a big pain in the ass for reading Letter/A4 sized PDFs, whereas this thing would feel about right. The question is whether that’ll be worth the price difference to enough people. Certainly some people will be attracted to it, but is it sustainable?

Ouch. I had a feeling it was going to be expensive…

@DigDug That is, the difference is that their construction implies they'll be doing those things in a repeated or sustained way, whereas yours is open to the interpretation that each thing is done only once.

@DigDug There are no examples of passive voice in the passages you cited. I forget what the term is for what they did versus what you did (future participle vs. plain old future tense, maybe?). But yours isn't an improvement.

That price goes away if you change schools. I've never ordered through the Apple Store's edu site, but I've heard they don't do anything to verify your claimed school affiliation. I wonder if they'll start, though, if this deal gets enough attention.

Jeebus, I pretty much just worked a lot. No orgies or illicit drug use. Don’t think I even skimmed pr0n at work. So, Nice.

Also, if I win, who wants A Crack in Time, since I’ve got a copy already?

@KingFaisal94 I don’t know about other laptops/netbooks/things-bigger-than-an-iPod-classic, but the MacBook Air also uses a 1.8" drive instead of a 2.5"