Why, has Apple done poorly in the music business for more than a decade?

I should have been more explicit about this in my article, but the proponents of range voting suggest and expect that you'll give your main candidate the top-most score in the scale, your least favorite the lowest possible score, and all the candidates in between somewhere within the range.

That's even how the ballot instructions go.

TreeRol, this way the scrupulous voters give their favorite a 10, their least favorite a 1. Does this take care of your concern?

Not that it has anything to do with the subject of the article, Maureen, but to answer your question about who wrote the "urgency of now" line, it was a fellow named Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time."

April 4, 1967.

http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

Thanks for the alerts, readers; the correction will appear shortly.

In two letters you say I mentioned Betamax. I didn't. I'm glad that others did.

Because I have not called for that, let alone kept calling.

here's what they're doing, as I wrote last year:

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/10/19/comcast/

To detect peer-to-peer communication, Comcast inspects packets -- the smallest meaningful bit of information on the Internet -- as they cross the network boundary. If Comcast determines that there are too many peer-to-peer users within its network sending files to people outside the network, it begins to interrupt the connections between Comcast users and those beyond Comcast.

To interrupt these communications, Comcast appears to be using technology made by a network management company called Sandvine. What's remarkable is how Sandvine manages to disrupt peer-to-peer traffic.

As Topolski describes it, Sandvine's system sends a "forged" packet to each of the two computers engaged in a peer-to-peer transfer -- the forged packet looks like it came from the other person's computer, and it basically tells each machine that the other is unavailable, ending the transfer.

The AP describes this marvelously: "Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer -- it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: 'Sorry, I have to hang up. Goodbye.'"

According to the author of Starbucked:

http://www.slate.com/id/2180301

Sure, they're getting a lot of publicity from this, but remember that they had to shut down all stores for three hours to do it. Whatever that costs, it's more than zero, and thus not "free."

I don't know what you mean by saying Starbucks treats employees like crap, but note that they do provide all their workers -- even part-time -- with health insurance. That's more than a lot of businesses do, especially many local coffee shops. Consequently, they have a much lower employee turnover rate than that of other large retailers.

Rather, I'm adding facts to the discussion. Many people like facts.

Is that the least they could do? No. They could do less; many other companies do. You still haven't said why you think they treat employees like "crap."

There were more than two candidates in many of those 10 debates. Therefore moderators had a larger field to choose from, and chose Clinton. And the other four didn't all go to Obama. So it ain't really so fair....

Your only data is "that is absolute bullshit." The Slate piece presented a great deal more than that. Do you have any evidence that the Slate piece was wrong?

I didn't say it was a handicap. I've never been in a presidential debate, so I don't know whether it's an advantage or handicap. You're right, it could be an advantage.

What I said was that moderators weren't picking fairly. If it's an advantage to go first, then HC is getting the advantage, and that's not fair either, right?

...I tried it because I wanted to see if it'd work.

Glad you're on the lookout for faux-Airborne supporters, Shar, but the one-time letter writers are more likely Yahoo users, who were sent here from a front-page link from the site. See yahoo.com, bottom right in the feature box. The story's getting some traffic from that link, hence the recent letters.

Yup, that corporate stuff is coming out too: "The iPhone 2.0 beta release includes both the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as new enterprise features such as support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to provide secure, over-the-air push email, contacts and calendars as well as remote wipe, and the addition of Cisco IPsec VPN for encrypted access to private corporate networks."

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/03/06iphone.html

for catching that.

That's what's great about Hulu -- it does have the new shows. Many more, in my estimation, than Joost does.

To answer your question -- posed in another thread also -- I'm not getting any cut from posting her songs. Neither is Salon. Thanks for your interest.

"my question is, why is this woman being the positive publicity she does not deserve?"

If you're asking why I wrote about her, it's because she's newsworthy. Your reading the piece would suggest you agree, but if you don't, that's fine with me.