Slashdot Mirror

I don't think creative robots are far off, we'll probably get them well before advanced AI:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/09/virtual-composer-makes-beautiful-musicand-stirs-controversy/

https://creativity-online.com/news/robot-creativity-turns-sweet-dreams-into-datadriven-art-for-ibis/237564

The good news is that the easiest target, Hollywood writers, will be first on the chopping block.

There are several makers of Linux laptops, at this point:
I've had great experiences buying from ZaReason, I know people who have had great experiences buying from System76, and ThinkPenguin is another option.

I'm writing this from a ZaReason UltraLap 430 (see recent review on Ars Technica, and a video review by Tom Merritt [note that there are a couple of mistakes about specs in the video]), which I love even more than the Thinkpad X-series that it replaced.

My wife has a ZaReason Alto 4330 that she loves even more than the Thinkpad X-series that it replaced.

For work, I've had several ZaReason machines--including some Alto 3880 laptops (the previous generation of what my wife now has). We got the Altos with 8-way multiprocessing (4-core + hyperthreading) and gobs of RAM, with run-times of 3-4 hours on a single charge and weight just over 4 lbs; they've made fantastic developers' laptops for us.

And, for what you get, the ZaReason machines aren't even that expensive (seriously--a monster-power Alto is only ~$1k).

If you ask for it, the computers even come with whatever username you want setup--you don't even have to fill your name into the account; you just turn the computers on and use them (if you don't ask for it, they infer it from the name on the order).

As I understand it from my friends, System 76 is basically the same way, except that they're Ubuntu only.

I'm honestly a bit stunned so many people hate it on Slashdot, beyond the obvious Microsoft bias, because it actually supports Flash. That's something that even Android cannot say ever since Adobe stopped supporting "mobile" platforms.

It only supports flash in for certain "whitelisted' sites which can actually end up providing a worse experience than other mobile platforms. I believe there are some hacks to get around this but for the average user it is only going to amount to more confusion and a perception that it "doesn't work".

First of all, I don't see anywhere in TFS where Steve Jobs is being bashed. I haven't read TFA.

But more importantly, if Steve Jobs were an honest and well-meaning engineer, don't you think they would want to commemorate him more with a branding of some functional product rather than a legal device which takes away others' ability to do the same?

The is the reason you're looking for. Steve Jobs was not a good person, and the public perception of him is largely that of an idol. In truth, he was a selfish, mistreatful jerk who would use any means, no matter how immoral ('I'm going thermonuclear on Android!'), to dominate the market. Samsung's lawyers at the latest Apple v Samsung hearing put it best:

We see what Apple is doing. It's an intentional engagement of "thermonuclear war," throughout the world. It's an attempt to compete in the courthouse rather than the marketplace. [After the preliminary injunction] Apple went to our customers and misused the "colorably different" langauge, and told them they couldn't sell any of our phones. They're using any results they get through the courts to clobber our name and prevent us from competing in the marketplace fairly, on the merits.

We don't think they're trying to establish boundaries. They're trying to cloud things and use the courthouse to compete with us.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/at-key-apple-samsung-hearing-judge-talks-lower-damages/

WebGL is not yet a web standard.

Neither is anything else in HTML5. The latest W3C Recommendation is still HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0/1.1/2.0. Besides, the 2D canvas was implemented in iOS before it was accepted by W3C.

And it still has stability and security problems.

True, in June of 2011, a bunch of security problems were pointed out in WebGL, causing Microsoft to shun WebGL in favor of its own Direct3D-based alternative as part of Silverlight. But what security problems remain eighteen months later? Google webgl security, limited to the past year, links to a page mentioning a possible DoS when a scene is so complex that it slows down the device, but that can already be done with JavaScript. This eight-month-old page claims that a lot of other vulnerabilities have been plugged as well. So what are the current attacks on WebGL in Firefox and Opera? One lingering possibility is that defects in graphics drivers could be exploited, but Apple controls the graphics drivers on iDevices.

The problems that Windows has are a Windows problem. They aren't shared by anyone else. Even the problems that Android has are down to bad apps masquerading as good ones and aren't the self-replicating and browse-by infections that you can get with Windows.

Windows is the only cesspool. It's about Microsoft engineering, not popularity.

Wow, that's some serious blinders you've got on, you've obviously got a religious attachment to some Microsoft hate that makes you spew out rubbish like that. The sort of thing that keeps you ignorant of things like jailbreakme.com, linux rootkits, OSF.8759, Slapper, Scalper, Linux.Svat and L10n among many, many, many others. You're just a clear ignorant fanboy.

Dear Mr Kline,
I'm deeply disappointed in my GOP caucus at the dismissal of Derek Khanna for his writing of a paper discussing copyright reform.

(ref http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/staffer-axed-by-republican-group-over-retracted-copyright-reform-memo/)

I sincerely hope you weren't "one of the congressmen" Rep Scalise was approached by to remove Mr Khanna.

Copyright reform is a desperately-needed, serious issue. "Shooting the messenger" signals that the GOP is NOT the party interested in fixing the situation. To less charitable eyes, it might even seem that these Representatives are just doing the bidding of their lobbyists from the MPAA and RIAA donors. The *only* silver lining here is that the Democrats are even MORE obviously in the pocket of media producers.

I invite you and your peers to review the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution: (art I, sec 8, clause 8) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Note, copyright is to PROMOTE THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE - not to promote the ongoing rent-seeking by the umpteenth-descendant of an artist. Further, the clause specifically says "LIMITED TIMES" - constantly revising copyrights out to longer and longer durations is complying with neither the letter nor the intent of the US Constitution.

So, I ask MY PARTY representatives in Congress - what's your point here?

I would love to get a serious, considered response to this email, or would cheerfully like a chance to talk to you on the subject.

On the other hand, if it is about deleting data *you* uploaded to a site/service, how about just using sites/services which up front offer a "delete all me data" option?

Except that currently the Delete button may not really do all that much. And to me this what all this is about.

One of the changes in the new set of documents is the removal of this community voting process. Ars Technica has a brief article on the changes.

A presidential election with an electoral setup is not a typical market though, and major drift between the popular and electoral votes would present a PR problem. And any study that claims money can't be turned into popular votes just wasn't thinking hard enough about how to spend the money. A major reason that Obama won the election by such a large amount was better directed spending, from having done this before. You do have to spend the money correctly though, such as using a heavily open-source platform for building software.

This story has popped up a few places already, and 90% of the comments are always "800C! But what if it catches fire?"

Yes, the floating gate is heated to 800C, but the volume of the heated area is on the order of a few hundred cubic nanometers. The energy involved in heating a volume that small is, well, incredibly small, and dissipates rapidly into rest of the chip. Your flash memory will not burst into flame. It will not require significantly more energy from your battery, and it will not require special clearance from the TSA to bring it on a plane.

The real challenge here is not coping with high temperatures, but rather balancing the increase in cell lifetime with the increase in die size. If the 100 million cycles number is completely accurate, then there's not much question that this technology will make its way into a lot of flash, but if that upside is only for a few (or even most) of the bits on a die, then things get more complicated

For more info run through the comments from the Ars Technica writeup of the same story: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/nand-flash-gets-baked-lives-longer/

To reiterate my comment posted on Ars two days ago when this popped:

So it's sort of a mix between traditional flash technology and the mechanism by which PCM works.

PCM does short pulses of between 400C and 700C to change the resistivity of the chalcogenide material, so generating these temperatures on microcircuitry like this isn't new.

*PCM = Phase Change Memory;

I suspect that 800C isn't out of reach, and the elements can be much coarser given you don't need them to alter a bit.

(That and call me when batteries become paper thin, let alone electrical contacts that are still good after being flexed a few tens of thousand times.)

Saw this yesterday... note the manufacturer.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/electric-wedgies-elastic-material-maintains-conductivity-when-stretched/

Windows 8 Storage Spaces is a great concept. A real world example, let's say you have lots of software installed, perhaps you use Steam? As your collection grows you might be unable to install all of it to a single volume. This would eliminate that issue by allowing the filesystem to span multiple disks.

The response from the Humble Bundle co-founder John Graham is this:
They're experimenting. They're trying to see if they can make the HIB system work for bigger games. But this is in no way a guaranteed change in how it will work in the future - they fully plan to continue the DRM-free, cross-platform indie game bundles, possibly even another one this year.

My own addendum:
If the experiment is a success, they'll likely be able to push harder in the future to force their partners to remove the DRM and/or port to Mac/Linux. But since this was the first one, they had to compromise a bit. And even then they could only get a publisher that's nearly dead and is desperate for PR and sales. Given how much backlash that's brought them from some sectors*, they almost definitely won't do the next one just like this. At least, not under the Humble Bundle name.

* I say "some sectors" because the gaming world is actually pretty excited about this one. They don't really care about the lack of Mac/Linux support or the DRM. It's rather clear that this bundle was aimed at them, not at anti-DRM crusaders or Mac/Linux fans.

Okay, I know nothing of these people, but did they ever promise to always be free and cross-platform?

Pretty much, yeah. From the Humble Bundle's blog:

Welcome to the blog of the Humble Bundle. We sell bundles of cross-platform, DRM-free video games by independent developers. You get to set your own price while supporting the Electronic Frontier...

Cross platform, DRM free, indie, and "pay what you want" are the four things that the Humble Bundle has built their brand on. Ars has a pretty good write up on the problems here:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/humble-thq-bundle-threatens-to-ruin-the-brands-reputation/

Win8 is 6.2. I guess because the server version didn't get their own version this time (Win2003 was NT 5.2).

Yep it is Windows Server 2012. Unlike Windows 8, it has great reviews and is a decent and better upgrade from Win2k3 than 2k8 by a longshot. The domain controllers support virtualization and the whole thing is very VMWare and HyperV friendly with tools built in. It has compression for Active Directory data for slow wan links, and cloud support, and other things.

The taxes appear to only apply to physical media, however, and only to music. So it's legal to copy music onto a blank CD or cassette for personal use, but not to copy in other circumstances. The Copyright Board was planning to extend the tax to iPods, which would make it legal to copy for personal use onto them as well, but that was overturned.

Yes, the taxes are on physical media, but they cover the distribution and use of all those bits and bytes. It implicitly covers computers as the medium where the music is stored prior to being transferred to a disc. Since we're looking at "reasonable doubt" territory, can a prosecutor prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the music was never intended to go onto CDs?

And while it technically does apply only to mp3s, the RCMP has stated that they're not actively pursuing individual infringement - and they're not happy about being bullied (by US policy) into enforcing the laws against larger, for-profit organizations. So when the feds won't initiate actions, and the provinces can't be bothered to enforce it (RCMP does enforcement in many provinces and all federal enforcement) ... where do you think that is going to leave the law?

I suspect ...it runs much faster than win7 on lower end hardware really means it boots faster, since Win8 doesn't routinely boot at all - just reloads a pre-booted memory image. Still, that probably makes it feel like it runs faster, since the main 'slowness' of Windows is that it seems to be ready to work when it really hasn't finished booting.

No, Windows 8 also run faster and uses less memory while doing so. Text rendering has become hw accelerated, more 2d rendering hw accelerated, DirectX and video rendering performance enhanced and general "creative" rendering has vastly improved:

http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-vs-windows-7-benchmarked_p2-7000002671/

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/gentlemen-start-your-benches-measuring-windows-8s-performance/

http://www.askvg.com/comparison-between-windows-7-and-windows-8-memory-management-system/

from http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+8+is+Using+Less+Memory+Than+Windows+7/article22986.htm :

[Windows 8]has 124 MB (~20 percent) more "Available Memory" on his 1 GB notebook -- the Windows 7 minimum memory requirement.

I'm guessing that on this basis they've annointed this new thing as having the potential "lifelong" protection from the flu. As for how this would be significantly different than just giving someone a regular flu shot with all the known HA subtypes, I don't see it. Seems like a bit of hype to me compared to what other folks are working on (e.g., specific artificial antibodies that target all HA subtypes).

It's got the potential to be a self-boosting vaccine; normally without periodic "reminders" the body tends to not make memory T cells for a given pathogen - but the epitope continues to be produced for as long as they can keep the plasmid stable. There's another approach, but it might seem a little squicky. Failing that, Wikipedia has a good breakdown on the what and why. A potential stronger immune response is one benefit, a persistent effect is another, and unlike some vaccines, a DNA vaccine can't ever give you the disease it's trying to prevent. It also looks like they can be mass produced without chicken eggs in the same method as any other DNA snippet - Polymerase chain reaction, making mass production staggeringly efficient. Also, it looks like they may be able to vaccinate against MS, which is kinda fucking magic.

But yes - if they vaccinated against all known subtypes of hemaglutinin, the vast majority of influenza wouldn't effect humanity. If we vaccinated against the ones not known to infect humans, we're likely to prevent zoonosis and a new strain jumping to human hosts and causing another 1918. And since these never wear off, you're likely to never catch the flu again until your bloodstream is so full of nanotech that the concept of "disease" becomes an antiquity.

There will be issues on 64-bit Windows as it seems 64-bit Firefox isn't being supported anymore...
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/64-bit-firefox-for-windows-should-be-prioritized-not-suspended

Stop letting apps control install/uninstall. Start showing dependency chains so you can reasonably uninstall a program without breaking other things.

Linux systems solved this problem and became the easiest systems to maintain. That is why they're still around and Solaris is owned by Oracle. The Mac had a good idea 20 years ago with their mostly resource/data forks and keeping everything in one file. They partially abandoned that with MacOSX and you ended up with guts that were on top of a UNIX fs with a GUI designed to hide that from you. Consequently, the apps all had access to drop their crap wherever they felt like and then you've got the same problem windows has.. only worse

because you need to hide metadata on portable and shared media so you dump .Trashes files everywhere along with 17 other interestingly named files. They also started using filename.extension as a format for sharing files, so you get troublesome results with applications that choose to creatively crap on your filesystem.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2001/08/metadata/7/

The answer is for commercial companies to stop allowing apps to run an executable to uninstall themselves. That has to be the dumbest idea possible from every approachable angle. Asking malware/adware/crapware if it wants to uninstall and if it would be so kind as to do so gracefully and without breaking anything, or leaving any files behind, or redirecting you to a website asking you why.

Even the article referenced states that this is not the case (from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/us-patent-chief-to-software-patent-critics-give-it-a-rest-already/):

Empirical evidence backs this up. For example, in a 2008 book, the researchers James Bessen and Michael Meurer found that for nonchemical patents, the costs of patent litigation began to exceed the benefits of holding patents in the 1990s. Software and business patents were particularly prone to litigation.

David Kappos is the one who is ill informed, and how exactly is his stats include any business that has a trademark. Also how do they measure innovations from the article it sound like they use patients/copyright/trademarks to judge. Well I don't think anybody would argue that the current system doesn't produce patients, and lots of business have them.

Kappos cited a Patent Office report released earlier this year that supposedly shows that "intellectual property" industries "supported the jobs of 40 million American workers, or 27.7 percent of all US jobs." But as we pointed out at the time the report was released, those figures mostly reflect a ludicrously broad definition of "IP-intensive industry." Any industry that makes use of trademark protection is counted as an "IP" industry, meaning that (as we put it in April) "if you hang sheetrock, bag groceries, or answer phones at a paper mill for a living, you're probably in an 'IP-intensive' industry as far as the Obama administration is concerned."

Maybe you are being sarcastic.

Dear Shuttleworth,

Don't think I don't know what you are doing. It was clever of you to have invested $1M in Inktank to support Ceph. That got you a lot of hits on ceph.com. It may take me all year, but through the power of science I will eventually beat your record of who can drive more traffic to our website. Like a master ninja I will blind you with my amazing insights. Just look at my analysis of Ceph's write performance on different disk controllers. Yeah it didn't get as many hits as your little investment announcement, but this is just the beginning. So my questions is, do you want to just give up now?

Mark

(Nelson, not Shuttleworth!)

Hello goatse.

You are always on my mind. You are one of a kind ...

This is the first OS I've seen that has made sense; I could see myself buying. It could be a great product, potentially an even more open OS in the market; Android compatibility; multitasking done right

Isn't Android compatibility a death sentence for an OS because of Google's blackmail of the Android OEMs?

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/google-blocked-acers-rival-phone-to-prevent-android-fragmentation/

I am curious which OEM(s) Jolla lined up. It can't be any of Samsung, HTC, Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, LG, Sony, Motorola(cough), Huwaei, Toshiba, Dell, ZTE etc.

What major OEM is left to make the phones? Nokia? (har har) Apple? (Yeah right.) RIM?

Any other no-name OEM or even self manufacturing is going to cripple the adoption of Jolla making it stillborn in this competitive market. Other problems are lack of access to Google's Android apps and the Play Store, but they're not insurmountable, maybe they can get Amazon to share it's app store which has a decent collection of apps. So much for Android being open when even MS doesn't (probably cannot due to antitrust) block OEMs from shipping Linux machines with WINE preinstalled.

they left us with a December.

It sounds as if you can't expect much robustness from smartphones these days, can you?

The Wii U makes use of an AMD 7 series GPU with 32MB of embedded eDRAM

It depends entirely on the developer. Call of Duty apparenty runs much better than on the other two. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/09/wii-u-coming-to-america-sunday-november-18/ and keeping it mind not only is COD running at 60 FPS on one screen, but it's updating a second screen. The AC series isn't even the pinnacle of good gaming. They knock out a title a year and the performance in the previous games wasn't even that great on the current systems. Probably because it's hard to optimise for something when you're too busy trying to knock out a game in record time.

It will almost certainly be the least capable system of its generation but it's not easy to compare it against the current generation for the mere fact developers are only learning how to use it, it has more screens and it will no doubt make it more obvious which developers are better than others.

Depends how you measure it. Graphics are better but the 3-core PowerPC processor is weaker.

hahahaha "googlefan1". Nice name.

The reality is webkit is using standard extensions and simply adding their own prefix to identify them, and Microsoft is not. Microsoft breaks the naming conventions entirely. The way IE handles naming conventions is so broken no other browser does so - and it's consistently not well documented. That's not a good thing. So microsoft is accusing them of not following standard extensions? That's beyond hilarious. That's not a pot meet kettle scenario, it's IE complaining that they can't subvert web standards like they have been and continue to attempt to do for years. AKA this is basically them complaining about silverlight not being able to fuck the web more than it has already.

wah wah the world functions without IE, wah wah. That's what this is.

If IE was going to focus on actual standards compliance you'd see their HTML5 compliance higher than webkit browsers offer, and it's not.

Also, why the fuck is this article linking to the comment sections? Slashdot has their own, but usually you'd link to the full article: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/microsoft-begs-web-devs-not-to-make-webkit-the-new-ie6/

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/new-super-mario-bros-u-review-the-best-2d-mario-in-decades/

Have a read of ISO OOXML convener: Microsoft's format "heading for failure", from which I quote:

Microsoft's failure to adopt the standard version of the format after two years has drawn criticism from Alex Brown, the convener of ISO's OOXML subcommittee (SC34). Brown was consistently supportive of Microsoft's push to obtain fast-track approval for OOXML during and after the ISO review process, but his optimism appears to be waning. In a recent blog entry, Brown contends that Microsoft is not fulfilling its commitment to adopt the ISO's edited version of the standard.

I would quote directly from Alex's blog, but sadly the "Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3634; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3634" serving the blog post has NullReferenceException.

Some other thoughts come from OOXML is defective by design, where this post Backwards compatible? One more lie by omission is worth reading.

Now all you need to do is follow up on your "swift updates for all devices" promise from 18 months ago and we'll be all set!

If FB is intentionally hiding those posts from fans who've opted into seeing them (precisely what people are accusing FB of because metrics have gone down so sharply at the same time FB is pushing for paid, promoted posts), then that is exactly bait and switch.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/11/is-facebook-broken-on-purpose-to-sell-promoted-posts/

I guess you may be looking for "fully" open in the mathematical sense, which is generally unachievable.

You can go over to OpenCores right now and download the spiffy OR1200 OpenRisc design and run it on the OpenRISC development board, but that board uses Altera FPGAs. Which themselves aren't open. Opencores.org had a failed kickstarter that they ran themselves (probably should have used Kickstarter), which raised about half the money needed to make a comminity sponsored chip of it.

http://opencores.org/or1k/OR1200_OpenRISC_Processor

Since that was not successful, you're stuck buying someone's processor, for which they'll have some ownership. Once you accept that and realize there are enormous numbers of processors out there (not really a lock in), then the question of open is about your ability to redesign the board and exert complete control of all the peripheral chips.

The A13 will let you do that. At release time the RPi would not, due to some documentation restrictions and video binaries, but they are making progress in this vein.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/all-code-on-raspberry-pis-arm-chip-now-open-source/

So if you want fully open, (and I certainly do), we need to convince the OpenCores people to run a kickstarter for the remaining funds needed, and contribute. Until then the A13 is as close as we get.

They also allege that Hogan has an old grunge against Samsung because they own part of Seagate (which had sued him into bankruptcy 20 years ago) and that he's a patent-owner himself (and very pro-patent)--neither fact he disclosed during the jury selection process.

Well folks, there you have it. The hidden dangers of old grunge; my mother always said it's Satan's music.

They also allege that Hogan has an old grunge against Samsung because they own part of Seagate (which had sued him into bankruptcy 20 years ago) and that he's a patent-owner himself (and very pro-patent)--neither fact he disclosed during the jury selection process.

In particular, Apple doesn't seem to have done much with floating point. ARM sure did... check out the expanded Geekbench results:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/nexus-10-tablet-is-a-solid-house-built-on-shifting-sands/3/

Apple's still ahead on GPU performance. As a big games company, no surprise on that one -- that's what people do with iOS.

My first post ever... how was this modded a 5?

I said BEGINNING its death spiral. That you can't see a trend right before your very eyes says more about you than Apple.

Right back at you.

Top Execs fired at apple for major maps failures.

This is not a bad thing for Apple. Firing people who do a terrible job is a good thing.

Deliberate production caps on new releases just so they can say they sold out.

Even after looking at your source... this is a load of crap. Do you have any idea how long it takes to get production ramped up to ship the first 5 million units? I would say this is an operational reality, not a marketing decision to have shortages.

Iphone 5 sales faltering.

This article said nothing of faltering sales. It said some analysts took a dartboard approach toward estimating sales.

Samsung is ecstatic about selling 16 million GS3's in a quarter. Apple sold 5 million iphones in a week. But sure, iphone sales are 'faltering'...

3 out of 4 smartphones purchases are Android.

Apple isn't looking to have the highest market share. The highest market share of smartphones (now that they are mainstream and more phone buyers are choosing smartphones) will be the smartphones that are free on contract. Android phones can be had free on contract, iphones can't. Apple doesn't care about not having the highest market share of smartphones. Samsung isn't looking for the GS3 to have the highest market share either. They both want profits, not highest market share.

Apple needs a refresh. Their initial sale clime with every new release is merely eating their own young, reselling to the same customer base while quietly running buy-back programs to take their old units off the street.

You are confusing deployed numbers with new new purchases which blinds you to trends. With a 3 year head start, Apple has a lot of faithful, who re-buy Apple each time. But New (first time) smartphone phone buyers are going 54% to Android and a distant 36% to Apple. The irresistible lure of Apple has worn off.

The market is calling TOP for Apple right now.

The market is not calling top for Apple right now. Large investors are beating down the price of AAPL, so they can get in at a lower price. It happens all the time, and it is easier to do when a bunch of reviews come out saying that Apple has terrible quality on the iphone, that maps sucks, that they don't have widgets, etc...

Clearly, consumers have a different take on 'quality' than the reviewers do.

For the record, I have only owned android phones, have had an ipad and a Galaxy Tab 10.1 (which I currently use). I recently bought an HTC One X. Not a fanboy by any means, but to say Apple is in the beginnings of a death spiral is lunacy. They are on track to sell close to 50 million iphones this quarter. That's quite a death rattle.

Disclosure: I am long AAPL.

Can you point it out? Because I can't find it. The closest thing I can find is this:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/apple-awarded-design-patent-for-actual-rounded-rectangle/?comments=1#comments-bar

But this is an extremely narrow patent, which covers the exact shape of an iPad. In order to infringe, you would need to have the exact height and width and roundness of the corners. Not exactly a singular patent on rounded rectangles in general.

The hardcore news for nerds is that the director of the CIA, the leading spy agency in the free world, was using gMail. Either Petraeus is too stupid to be spymaster-in-chief or Google is running an email system secure enough for the CIA and the FBI team that combed through his emails. It's also possible that the account was phony but one wonders why Petraeus wasn't quick to deny the authenticity of the emails.

I said BEGINNING its death spiral. That you can't see a trend right before your very eyes says more about you than Apple.

Top Execs fired at apple for major maps failures.
Deliberate production caps on new releases just so they can say they sold out.
Iphone 5 sales faltering.
3 out of 4 smartphones purchases are Android.

Apple needs a refresh. Their initial sale clime with every new release is merely eating their own young, reselling to the same customer base while quietly running buy-back programs to take their old units off the street.

You are confusing deployed numbers with new new purchases which blinds you to trends. With a 3 year head start, Apple has a lot of faithful, who re-buy Apple each time. But New (first time) smartphone phone buyers are going 54% to Android and a distant 36% to Apple. The irresistible lure of Apple has worn off.

The market is calling TOP for Apple right now.

For $100, i really hope its not based on the Maylong 150....

Its not, the maylong had a via 8650 processor with no coprocessing and a 400 mhz main processor, overclocked to the 533, 600 or even 800 claimed by sellers. The PengPods all have A10 1-1.2 GHZ processors with a 4 core mali coprocessor and the cedarx video coprocessor. Typically the system gets unstable after 1.2 Ghz but it can be taken up to 1.5, we are hoping the improvements in the boot software will eventually make that possible. Note that not all the source is available for the video processors but there has been a lot of work to make the closed libraries work well. Full disclosure: Im part of the project.

For $100, i really hope its not based on the Maylong 150....

Re Given the impossibility of keeping ANYTHING secret in this country
We got a tiny feel for it via news about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software)#Antivirus_vendor_cooperation
"FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool"
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/01/bavarian-government-caught-looking-for-skype-backdoor/
So yes its "spilled" but usually years later and seems more of a telco/crypto/hardware/software curiosity by many.
As for "no more risk than a simple text file" - you now have the open free for all that any nation can mess with the telco, hardware or software of another nation - no questions asked.
Before that it was all 'hackers' 'probing' 'scams' 'kids' maybe the CIA faulty chips in the Soviet Unions pipelines... but to buy the unique hardware, test it and then try to pass it off as a non state actor is new.
Now its a state free for all.

Google, Facebook etc have heavy redundancy against hardware failures.

Their approach doesn't work if your application needs "single system image" and still needs high redundancy.

I was wondering for years why Intel and the OS people didn't sit down and work out additional ways to use those extra transistors. But recently they seem to doing something: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/transactional-memory-going-mainstream-with-intel-haswell/

Would be good if they can also do stuff to make Single System Image and clustering easier.

Heck just getting time of day and getting monotonic time is harder and crappier than it has to be on x86 platforms.

Bill Gates killed the Courier because it had no email ?! "Gates' response by explaining that Microsoft makes billions from Exchange, and so a product with no e-mail is a problem - a machine that doesn't do e-mail isn't going to help shift Exchange licenses."

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/11/killing-courier-the-right-decision-maybe-not-the-right-reasons/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20128013-75/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/

Microsoft has no vision - they are just another "me too" company and most people don't care. Apple is _perceived_ as being "first", "better", "easier". Mass market sex appeal is what Apple's marketing dept. has learned in spades; Microsoft still struggles to understand this simple concept.

£inux

You'll get more of the same with *buntu, however.

* - http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-search-results-into-os-to-raise-cash/

Just in from Ars: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/california-judge-blocks-voter-approved-ban-on-anonymity-for-sex-offenders/