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People putting up with the lack of flash on iOS continue to amaze me.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57321157-264/adobe-abandons-flash-plug-in-for-mobile-devices-report/

hmmm.... compare that to the iPad experience and you end up making a separate iPad version of your app

No, you make one app with resources for both. Developers choose to separate apps.

As a result I had full SSL VPN capability on my Android phone pretty much from the beginning while the feature is still lacking on iOS,

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1288

You see all the accessories as a good thing which I find strange.

Strangely that doesn't seem like a solution for my car or gym equipment,,,,,

There is most certainly a use for high-end GPU nVidia cards. Like in supercomputing applications,. . .

If anyone wades through the insightful comments up to this point,

1. Blueseed has an FAQ that answers a lot of concerns
2. Peter Thiel is now onboard

Anything on EA's conditions?
I haven't heard anything about the working conditions at EA aside from jokes.

I haven't seen much lately, but in 2004 it was alleged that EA sucked the soul (or at least any semblance of work-life balance) out of its employees... http://news.cnet.com/Electronic-Arts-faces-overtime-lawsuit/2100-1043_3-5450316.html

They settled a couple of years ago for millions, no word on whether conditions have improved. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/26/business/fi-ea26

iNtroducing: The iPod Fondle!

I bet this guy can't wait to upgrade!

*runs*

We still have time to save ourselves.

The Playbook sold out up here in Canada within hours of going on sale last week and it looks like the same thing is happening in the US. According to this CNet article'the $199 BlackBerry tablet is now listed as 'unavailable' at most Best Buy stores in the U.S. For example, a Best Buy in suburban Los Angeles said it had sold out of the $199 PlayBook "a couple of days ago," according to a sales representative.'

Wasn't there a Windows95 bug that would 100% crash the OS after 46 days? And it took years to find this bug because usually the OS would crash much much earlier...

49.7 days. Affected Windows 95 and 98. http://news.cnet.com/Windows-may-crash-after-49.7-days/2100-1040_3-222391.html

*Ahem*

I am about to explain the joke:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57328344-71/pakistan-bans-rude-text-messages/

Is that true in the US? I always assumed that a person could be otherwise legally compelled to surrender any encryption keys. I know this isn't exactly citing case law, but it sounds like the issue is unsettled:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078312-281/doj-we-can-force-you-to-decrypt-that-laptop/

If you attract the interest of a sophisticated enough adversary, the FBI or NSA for instance, you're probably toast. And if your adversary isn't concerned with following the law, well your fingers (or the fingers of your family members) can be lopped off one at a time until you remember your passphrase. Plausible deniability is a better strategy.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9741357-7.html

Climate changes. It isn't static. Weather, even more so. To cast climate change as the villain in a scare story is the ultimate gimmick. When I was a kid (in the 1950's), we had some long dry spells in NE Pennsylvania. And there was the dust bowl.

No climate isn't static and no scientist claims it is. However, WE have adapted to a particular climate and expect it to stay within norms to survive. Changes in the climate can have devastating effects to regions not prepared to deal with them.

As to your examples, a dry spell isn't climate change. The dust bowl wasn't climate change either. Those were both weather events.

Further back, there were other notable and unusual climate events. And huge swings in temperature. Also huge swings in CO2 (although they lagged warm periods, they didn't lead them... obviously the plants making lots and lots.

Your claim of CO2 lagging warming is nonsense and has been thoroughly debunked. Also, plants do no make CO2, they consume it. Conditions millions of years ago have jack to do with our current climate. Different albedos, land mass configurations, etc. .

But this doesn't provide evidence that CO2 increases warmth, it provide evidence that CO2 correlates with decreasing warmth.

Really? And what is your scientific research backing up such a ridiculous claim? It seems all the peer-reviewed science says the exact opposite. Let me guess, you're a conspiracy nut, right?

Still, no one can predict climate in the best of times, much less now.

Of course, since you're clearly an expert on the subject. Climate is much easier to predict than weather.

Yet, sometimes the climate does very unfriendly things.

Yes it does, usually over 100's or 1000's of years which is usually enough time for adaptation. Sudden changes have had some rather nasty side effects in the past. The changes we are seeing now are happening with a lifetime or two. At best, that should raise some concern. It wouldn't take much change to render the US into a nation full of starving people for example. Shift the jet stream north and suddenly the nations breadbasket turns into a desert.

So it's the perfect bogy-man to point at if you want to scare money out of people, or distract them.

You're confusing terrorism and climate science. Terrorism is an ill-defined nebulous threat with about as much real threat as you being struck by a bolt of lightning on any given day. Climate science is a well researched topics that has made many verifiable predictions and has a huge amount of data and research backing it up.

Having said that, yes, we should reduce our CO2 emissions. And the good news is, we will -- quite naturally -- as we stop burning petroleum. And we will stop, because it's hard to get, appears to be running out, and we have to negotiate with crazy people to get enough, and alternate sources make more sense on many levels, and we'll be reducing our power consumption by increasing efficiency, a good example being by wide adoption of electric vehicles, which we'll have in great numbers very shortly -- VERY shortly if recent battery tech announcements (1,2) pan out. What we don't need to to is torque the economy (even further) out of shape to deal with an emergency that isn't here and which so far, no one has shown decisively to be incoming.

The point is that if we keep burning fossil fuels until they get too expensive to use we will just make the situation worse. It's not just oil. It's also coal, natural gas, and any other carbon based fuel source that isn't carbon neutral. None of these are going away any time soon.

But clearly, no amount of scientific research will convince you otherwise, so we'll just wait and see what happens over the next decade or so.

Climate changes. It isn't static. Weather, even more so. To cast climate change as the villain in a scare story is the ultimate gimmick. When I was a kid (in the 1950's), we had some long dry spells in NE Pennsylvania. And there was the dust bowl. Further back, there were other notable and unusual climate events. And huge swings in temperature. Also huge swings in CO2 (although they lagged warm periods, they didn't lead them... obviously the plants making lots and lots. But this doesn't provide evidence that CO2 increases warmth, it provide evidence that CO2 correlates with decreasing warmth.) Still, no one can predict climate in the best of times, much less now. Or weather. Yet, sometimes the climate does very unfriendly things. So it's the perfect bogy-man to point at if you want to scare money out of people, or distract them.

Having said that, yes, we should reduce our CO2 emissions. And the good news is, we will -- quite naturally -- as we stop burning petroleum. And we will stop, because it's hard to get, appears to be running out, and we have to negotiate with crazy people to get enough, and alternate sources make more sense on many levels, and we'll be reducing our power consumption by increasing efficiency, a good example being by wide adoption of electric vehicles, which we'll have in great numbers very shortly -- VERY shortly if recent battery tech announcements (1,2) pan out. What we don't need to to is torque the economy (even further) out of shape to deal with an emergency that isn't here and which so far, no one has shown decisively to be incoming.

Someone linked a cnet article with more information including how it is produced.

From reading it it sounds like it will be easier to produce, but I really don't know a damn thing on this subject.

What's your take?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57327382-264/breakthrough-material-is-barely-more-than-air/?part=rss&subj=crave&tag=title

The lattice is constructed through several steps, Carter said. First, lasers beam ultraviolet light into a reservoir of a resin that forms polymer fibers when the light hits it. The fibers follow the path the light takes, and using multiple beams creates multiple interconnected fibers.

Next, the rest of the resin is washed away, the polymer fibers are coated with a very thin layer of nickel, and the polymer fibers are then dissolved, leaving only the metal lattice.

The dimensions of the lattice can be adjusted by changing the properties of a perforated mask through which the ultraviolet line is beamed, the paper said.

That's difficult. UV lasers are a pain because air absorbs UV somewhat well, and UV-transparent lenses aren't cheap. (A lot of intermolecular bonds have energies in the same range as UV photons, so they're not only opaque but also break apart when hit by UV -- hence DNA damage, for instance.) All the UV lasers I've worked with used fluorine gas, which was always exciting to work with, although there are some very fussy, expensive, low-efficiency frequency-doubling systems that can produce UV.

The other drag is coating extremely convoluted surfaces with a thin film of nickel. Physical vapor deposition, where you just boil the nickel and let it drift in and stick, isn't going to get all the inner recesses, and the outer areas where the vapor hits first is going to be much more heavily plated than inner areas, so they're probably doing chemical vapor deposition or the like -- or some strange nickel tetracarbonyl complex -- to infiltrate the stuff and then crash out the nickel on the surfaces. Totally cool but not stuff you want to play with at home unless you're an expert or enjoy having nickel-plated lungs.

If you are serious then there are plenty of resources.

B & N has a pretty good comparison on it's own page of the devices as well as a comparison of the Kindle Fire.
Cnet has a good review of the Nook Tablet and you can pick up a refurbished Nook Color for around ~$149

Someone linked a cnet article with more information including how it is produced.

From reading it it sounds like it will be easier to produce, but I really don't know a damn thing on this subject.

What's your take?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57327382-264/breakthrough-material-is-barely-more-than-air/?part=rss&subj=crave&tag=title

The lattice is constructed through several steps, Carter said. First, lasers beam ultraviolet light into a reservoir of a resin that forms polymer fibers when the light hits it. The fibers follow the path the light takes, and using multiple beams creates multiple interconnected fibers.

Next, the rest of the resin is washed away, the polymer fibers are coated with a very thin layer of nickel, and the polymer fibers are then dissolved, leaving only the metal lattice.

The dimensions of the lattice can be adjusted by changing the properties of a perforated mask through which the ultraviolet line is beamed, the paper said.

The cnet article someone else linked has a lot more information.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57327382-264/breakthrough-material-is-barely-more-than-air/?part=rss&subj=crave&tag=title

It looks like this will be significantly cheaper to produce than aerogels and sturdier.

on Cnet it specifically states that the .9mg/cm^3 is without air.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57327382-264/breakthrough-material-is-barely-more-than-air/?part=rss&subj=crave&tag=title

they even copied the power brick

I'm sorry, are you saying that the shape of an AC-to-DC adaptor is patentable? Seriously? It's a block on a cord. Ok, let's do a Google search for your Apple power brick... huh, looks like the majority of responses seem to be about a class-action lawsuit against Apple for selling a power brick that sparks and catches fire. Hmm. Aha! Here we are - Apple sued Media Solutions Holdings for duplicating the look of their power brick - but Media Solutions Holdings isn't Samsung, and that lawsuit was in 2009. Sorry, I'm not understanding where your fanboi-ish complaint about a power brick is coming from.

As for the claims of trademark infringement... Are you complaining about the size and shape of a smartphone? Literally every smartphone on the market can be described generically as "a brick about 1 cm thick, 7 cm wide, and around 12 cm long". Similarly, nearly all of them are either black, white, or silver. Most of the decent ones that don't break after 6 months of normal use have no moving parts, so they can all be described as having a screen and practically nothing else as the front face, as well.

Or did you want to complain about a generic set of icons?

One of the icons pictured as "infringing" is a picture of a white-ish telephone handset, on a green field. You know, like every cellphone in the world has on its face, to indicate the button to push to get the dialer? Yeah, that sounds like a big trademark infringement there. Better sue Nokia, Motorola, HTC, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile while you're at it - they all use green pictures of telephone handsets to indicate which button to push to make a voice call, too. Come to think of it, so does Microsoft.

Another icon is a speech balloon, indicating (surprise) texting and/or chat. Again, this is on damn near every text-capable phone in the world.

The third icon in that series is a picture of a... what is that, a sunflower? So now a picture of a flower is an infringement? It's not the same flower, it's not the same picture angle, it's not the same amount of flower shown, and one of them has boxes superimposed over it. What, exactly, is infringing here? More to the point, what part of "picture of sunflower" is supposed to make me think "Apple iPhone"?

Moving right along to the fourth pair of pictures showing the "similarities" of these two devices, we have a settings icon. A representation of a gear, or gears. Show me an OS that doesn't use a gear like that. No, really. Win95 uses a gear picture very similar to that for MS-DOS applications. Quick, call Microsoft so they can get a piece of this sideshow!

The notepads pictured in the next pair of icons are similar, yes... but how many different icons can you think of that might indicate some sort of note-jotting application? The only other thing I can think of is a Post-It, and those are trademarked, too.

A bust of a person, in silhouette, to indicate a contact list. MySpace and FaceBook should be able to cut ahead in line for that one, and maybe they can sue Apple too, just for fun.

Gasp! The HORROR! They stole the idea of an using image of a compact disc with a musical note superimposed to indicate a music player application! ... or maybe they just figured that it made sense, since a CD is the only way to purchase a physical copy of music any more.

Let's move on to the patent infringement, shall we?

"Patent #7,863,533 is an old-school hardware patent. Titled 'Cantilevered push button having multiple contacts and fulcrums', it covers the volume rocker on the iPhone 3G and 3GS" ... and every other device for the past 10 years that has an audio output.

Ok, I'm done with this, it's starting to feel like I'm shooting children's candy in a barrel, or something.

Customers were used to using drivers for scanners and etc, Apple took that away (effectively taking away the supported hardware) in Snow Leopard by breaking tons of them -- and never going back to fix them.

That's a third party problem, they need to support their own devices.

Customers were used to being able to run the PPC apps they had spent many dollars on... Apple took that away in Lion.

After they licensed very expensive software (Rosetta) to give you years to ween yourself of off PPC. I find it hard to imagine another OS vendor expending that much effort to do a seamless transition, even Bill Gates was impressed they pulled the intel switch off as seamlessly as Apple did. Ungrateful much ?

Customers have been used to apps (oh, I dunno, like Photoshop?) that were part of a system of apps that worked with their data, and Apple's taking that away within the bounds of the app store... and you think it's unlikely that this policy will spread outside the store?

Yes, they're not going to piss off a sizeable part of their customer base by making it impossible to run Photoshop or other Pro apps.

Buddy, Apple does what it wants -- they are *famous* for doing "teh stupidz" -- folders that don't nest under IOS, "wifi sync" that doesn't work under Leopard, a 4-year old native OS, while it does under XP, a ten year old non-native OS, they break the living hell out of IOS apps with just about every "upgrade", forcing developers to put up Yet Another Version of their app to correct for the incompatibilities...

Nested folders are a bad idea. People don't get nested hierarchies, spend some time watching non-geeks use computers and you'll see.
Leopard is down to 22% market share, XP only just dipped below 50% this summer. There's a vast amount of XP machines out there, so unfortunately Apple should expend the effort to support them.
iOS is a platform that's developing at an enormous pace because mobile is so competitive and fast evolving. Change or get left behind is the name of the game, accumulating backwards compatibility cruft à la Windows would be deadly. That said I have not heard many complaints about breakages.

When your reasoning depends upon Apple doing things because customers have expectations, your reasoning is no better than a random guess. Apple makes roadmaps, has "visions", and then aims at them. Up until Leopard and IOS4, they were doing pretty well at hitting the target, though of course everyone wanted more. 10.6 and later, IOS5... these are huge bags of fail from several perspectives, most especially from the one you're using to make your assertion: Apple doesn't aim at keeping customers expectations static.

You obviously don't like iOS5 and Lion. There are a lot of us who would beg to differ.

No, but as Bill C-32 has not yet passed, the 2004 Supreme Court decision is still the prevailing law with regard to P2P file sharing. Sending cease-and-desist letters to law-abiding citizens of another jurisdiction is nothing but legal intimidation.

FYI Anonymous already cut a deal with the Zetas, in exchange for their buddy back in one piece, they don't post anything.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57318930-245/anonymous-drops-zeta-threat-after-return-of-kidnappee/?part=rss&subj=latest-news

Also for the on-going safely for the non-anonymous members, I don't think anonymous is going to post anything about the Zetas anytime in the near future...

http://lezgetreal.com/2011/11/anonymous%E2%80%99-next-lesson-%E2%80%93-how-to-run-for-your-life/

Everyone has their limit to their actions, Anonymous has discovered it. But of course the Anon fanbois are still cheering/goading them on...

Story about a company that left Microsoft
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

The CEO DEMANDED that his company make the switch within 6 months after a Business Software Alliance settlement for about $65K.

Finally, yelling at the TV and calling it an ass (Siri translates as a homonym of butt in Japanese) will make sense and achieve an objective.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20116165-71/apples-siri-is-apples-buttocks-in-japan/

You keep thinking you heard the word 'invent' when really it was 'innovate'.

Steve Jobs more tweaker than inventor Someone else with the same trouble.

"Dead fuel is free energy; its that simple." It's not FREE. Not even remotely. So are you telling me the environmental destruction from the Alberta Tar Sands is FREE? http://s.ngm.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/img/candian-oil-sands-615.jpg. Are you saying that the cancer causing elements that are spewed into the air from fossil fuels are FREE? http://www.epa.gov/air/basic.html. Your misnomer is one of the reasons we are in this situation. And there are a thousand other articles and studies that say that fossil fuels are harmful to you and me. If you want me to site them I will.

It's great that you made your argument on your opinion. But let me give you some information about alternative energy that is from reputable sources. From MSNBC (and others...FYI from a study funded by Google): "Clean, accessible, reliable and renewable energy equivalent to 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants in the U.S....What's more, the energy can be tapped with existing technology, according to the researchers. That's largely due the recent development of drilling techniques that make methods such as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) possible." TEN TIMES what we get from coal on an annual basis without the mining destruction nor the carcinogens in the air. THAT IS FUCKING FREE ENERGY. http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/27/8509629-energy-from-hot-rocks-abounds?chromedomain=cosmiclog. Or CNET if you prefer: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20125837-54/geothermal-potential-reaches-coast-to-coast/

Or maybe you'd like to hear the opine of a nobel prize laureate in economics about the economic reality of solar power? Is there a Moore's Law to solar power? Actually there probably is, but if the fossil fuel industry has it's way it will probably be stymied....oh wait it already has. " In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year."--AND--"Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/krugman-here-comes-solar-energy.html?_r=1&hp.

So the question remains smarty are you with us or against us? Please give any sources that are not your opinion and actually sited to a reference to the contrary.

Thanks.

"..how do I get back the enjoyment I used to have writing code?"

What do you like? Code something to do more of that.

I used to like music, so I wrote a music DB similar to scrobbler.
I like tech news now, so I wrote a "better" site to get it to me faster.
I watch a lot of tv, and I got annoyed when the daily show was a repeat. .
Are you a Sneakerhead? Write a db for your shoes.

Find anything, and write something to make that thing better.

I thought DRM was already a thing of the past. Who is still doing that?

Netflix, for one.

Move over, Web surfing. Netflix movies now take up more of the Internet pipes going into North American homes.

A study published Tuesday by Sandvine Inc. shows that Netflix movies and TV shows account for nearly 30 percent of traffic into homes during peak evening hours, compared with less than 17 percent for Web browsing.

Only about a quarter of homes with broadband subscribe to Netflix, but watching movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing, email and practically every other Internet activity except file sharing and videoconferencing.

As late as last year, both Web surfing and peer-to-peer file sharing â" mainly the illegal trading of copyrighted movies â" were each larger than Netflix's traffic.

Netflix's Internet traffic overtakes Web surfing [May 17]

Barnes & Noble made a big deal out of its brand-new Nook Tablet's compatibility with Netflix and Pandora at its recent unveiling, apparently giving Amazon a bit of a complex. Amazon did its best to one-up the Nook in today's release, rolling out the laundry list of Fire-friendly apps that will be available on day one, including "Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and popular games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio."

Amazon now says "several thousand" Android apps will be available through the Amazon Appstore for Kindle Fire, considerably less than the hundreds of thousands of apps currently populating the Android Market. Of course, this could be a good thing, as much of what's offered there is pure garbage.

Kindle Fire: Yep, it'll have Netflix, Pandora, and more

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/

But Android users don't buy apps....
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/

They don't surf the web
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20128243-264/android-browser-bumps-opera-for-no-2-spot/?tag=mncol;txt

And even 2/3rd's of Google's mobile traffic comes from iOS devices....

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/two-thirds-of-googles-mobile-search-traffic-comes-from-ios-devices-18718/

Most modern cell phones can be remotely turned on, often without telling the user it's on.

http://news.cnet.com/FBI-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

Miller announced the news on Twitter this afternoon, saying "OMG, Apple just kicked me out of the iOS Developer program. That's so rude!"
- cnet.com

Really? You've been around Apple and seen how they react for how many years and you were surprised by this?

I have no reason to be impressed by the moral fiber of the "finder"; but we have SFPD's confirmation that(just as the "finder" originally claimed, before any independent confirmation was available) that four of their people accompanied two of Apple's to the address given, that the two Apple people went inside to look, and that none of the SFPD did. We also know that the contact information allegedly provided by the Apple agent at the time matched those of an Apple agent on Linkedin, who promptly nuked his profile after the story appeared(which doesn't prove that he didn't look the details up in order to add flavor to his story; but is interesting). That doesn't tell us what was said at the scene; but it isn't as though our questionably fibrous friend made the incident up: we just don't know whether he embellished it.

Again, none of this suggests anything in favor of the guy's character; but it does provide a degree of corroboration for his claims, from a source that would have no obvious interest in corroborating a false allegation of their involvement...

We need lots of scientists/engineers/etc., and relatively few athletes

If pay is any indication, this nation is suffering from a critical shortage of Senior Vice Presidents. Apple just has to pay $60,000,000 bonuses to each of its Senior Vice Presidents to to keep them from taking their unique skills to other companies where, apparently, Senior Vice Presidents might be paid even more. No word yet on the STEM folks underneath who design their products. And of course we all know what the poor schmucks who actually manufacture their goods make. Why is higher education not responding to the obvious indicators of demand? We should cancel all STEM education for the next 5-10 years and focus on the vibrant Senior Vice President sector so all Americans can get $60,000,000 bonuses.

Despite their best efforts, the BSA promotes open-source software.

In 2000, the Business Software Alliance conducted a raid and subsequent audit at the San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based company that turned up a few dozen unlicensed copies of programs. Ball settled for $65,000, plus $35,000 in legal fees. But by then, the BSA, a trade group that helps enforce copyrights and licensing provisions for major business software makers, had put the company on the evening news and featured it in regional ads warning other businesses to monitor their software licenses.

Humiliated by the experience, Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."

Ball's IT crew settled on a potpourri of open-source software--Red Hat's version of Linux, the OpenOffice office suite, Mozilla's Web browser--plus a few proprietary applications that couldn't be duplicated by open source. Ball, whose father, Ernie, founded the company, says the transition was a breeze, and since then he's been happy to extol the virtues of open-source software to anyone who asks. He spoke with CNET News.com about his experience.

MS did purchase licenses from SCO. More important, MS helped finance BayStar shortly before BayStar helped finance SCO for the lawsuits, thus preserving plausible deniability.
See the Halloween documents indicated in another post above as well as this and this.

Apparently the Slate has been selling pretty steadily since its announcement --- mostly to business, but Amazon is listing just 4 in stock at the moment.

More positive and informative article here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-57317842-290/surprise-hps-slate-pc-is-a-success/

There aren't that many competitors in the Windows Tablet PC slate-format since Fujitsu quit. I really wish HP would revive the form-factor of the critically-acclaimed Compaq TC-1x00 though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Compaq_TC1100

which truly offered the best of all possible worlds.

William

For example, if I buy my employee an iPhone or iPad, I then probably need to buy him some apps so he can do work, i.e. an app to work with MS Office files, and probably one or two other apps. The apps have to be purchased under an iTunes account so we put it under his corporate e-mail, now what happens when he leaves?

Apple's word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps, Pages Numbers and Keynote. $9.99 each. You think businesses are worrying about $29.97 when one a member of staff is replaced? If anything, businesses aren't used to paying so little for software. And most apps are even cheaper than that. It's not worth the time it would take to administer the exchange of licenses when things are that cheap.

What's stopping a developer from releasing their app for free on the app store and requiring the use to input an unlock code before they can use it? This is how it works on PCs. You can download the trial version of Photoshop, use it for 30 days, and then if you want to continue using it you have to purchase it and enter the product key. Why would this not work with apps?

What's to stop them? Apple's rules. You aren't allowed to cheat Apple out of their 30%. But it's a bad idea for developers anyway - free downloads with reg-codes are the most widely pirated software. People can be sure they aren't getting a trojan because they download it from the developers website (or Apple in your scenario) rather than a torrent site. And a reg-code is so easy to pass around.

Sure, iPhone apps are pirated too, but it involves jailbreaking and downloading modified apps from shady sites. And most people don't know how/are afraid/couldn't be bothered doing that. Especially as doing it the honest way, apps are cheap and are no effort to install.

Your suggestions complicate things, and Apple and the App store are both sucessful because they make things easier, not more difficult.

Also, don't even get me started on the fact that you have to have a credit card on file to even purchase apps in the first place. Corporations don't like to give out corporate CC numbers to every employee that needs to purchase apps, so you end up with employees purchasing apps and expensing them, which creates a lot of extra work for the finance dept since they now have a huge influx of expense reports to process

No credit card required. Single bulk purchase, or pay as you go with normal business purchasing methods.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20079490-248/apple-debuts-app-store-volume-purchase-program/

Plus, you have the employees who get a corporate iPhone / iPad and then fill it up with their music collection and complain that they run out of HDD space when they sync it to their laptop, AND they bitch that their music and photos weren't backed up when their laptop dies.

Which is a generic problem with PCs. It's not specific to anything Apple.

I agree the fire may not be a good default but it should be an easy option for machines that can handle it. The cube is not for every machine either but when it works well it's great for switching workspaces. I still use 8.04 with the cube and fire on an eMachines T3092 I found. Added 1 Gig of Ram and lots of hard drive and it runs great. I love rolling the mouse wheel over the desktop to flip the cube. Very responsive with dozens of programs open. I have older machines that won't run compiz (usually because of a lack of 3D video drivers) but that machine is 7 years old.

The cube can definitely be a nice introduction to anyone who has never heard of Linux.

It looks like a SATA cable is used but Google doesn't mention it specifically in the article.

Plenty of eyecandy to spare.

And they do it all wrong. If Ubuntu is going to use Compiz by default they should setup the cube. Set fire to close windows. Genie for min/max (airplaine, beam, something cool). I understand why some people don't like eye candy though. Unfortunately Unity provides none of the really cool eye candy or configuration (by default) and every conceivable problem.

For what it's worth my 8.04 machine with 1.5G RAM +compiz +compiz-addons is far more responsive under load than Unity is on an Aspire 5250-BZ873, both running similar compiz effects.

personal jetpack

Exists already if you want to pay $100,000.

and flying car...

Also exists and is shipping out 2012, although you won't be allowed to take off/land on the highways. $250,000

So...the future is now?

If Red Hat can't hack it in the presence of competition from CentOS then Red Hat needs to die, because it's not providing a service anyone values enough to actually pay for.

Except that Red Hat does provide services people value, they're they top contributor to the Linux kernel. People want Red Hat's software and they have two options, pay for it, or get it for free (CentOS). This is a similar problem to the piracy in the music industry; except it's worse because using CentOS is legal.

Not only this, but the more effort Red Hat puts in to make their software better, the less support people need and so the less money they get (From people not buying their support).

The Sony XBR-HX929 series produces deeper black levels than any current LCD or plasma TV, giving excellent overall picture quality. It evinces accurate shadow detail and color... One of the best-performing LED-based LCDs we've ever tested, the expensive local-dimming Sony XBR-HX929 competes well with the top plasmas.

(cite)

Granted, that's an expensive set, but cheaper LCDs are so much better than they used to be.

Welcome to reality, dude, it's the internet, for everything there is a list, often many lists. Here you go audio hardware that supports flac http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html and http://reviews.cnet.com/flac-mp3-players/ and even other forums http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/804579 chat about it.

So let's introduce manufacturers to reality and ignore their B$ and don't buy their stuff if they wont provide the features you're after.

They're suing to protect their product, because companies like Samsung are clearly ripping them off, and it's obvious to anyone who isn't a raving Apple hater.

Hell, Samsung sells a knock-off MacBook Pro running Windows that has a mock Apple logo in the center of the screen to futher intentionally confuse consumers. They're even outright stealing Apple icons and using them in their store backdrops.

For some reason, Slashdot has completely ignored all these obvious instances of blatant copying and instead obsessed over the fact that Apple is "abusing the patent system," because patent system articles get a ton of page hits around here. But the fact is that Apple really is getting ripped off and is suing to protect its design work.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20080659-17/next-xbox-to-feature-avatar-like-graphics/

Yep. HTC were making Windows CE-based phones years before the iPhone was released. And then there were the Palm-based phones, which I think predated even those.

The PDAphone is eleven years old, approximately.

Let's not forget; Ballmer isn't exactly fond of Google*. I'm not surprised he's got a mouthful of trash to talk.

"At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office," Lucovosky recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google." Schmidt previously worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell.

[*] - http://news.cnet.com/2100-1014_3-5846243.html

Actually Yang may end up with the last laugh, as it is pretty common knowledge that he has wanted his company back and the collapse may allow him to take Yahoo private again which seems to have been his main goal all along.

And let us not forget that the REAL value of Yahoo was NOT search but webmail which MSFT did NOT get and which if you'll read the stats I have provided shows that Yahoo has DOUBLE the users Gmail has. That is a hell of a lot of eyeballs for ads friends. If he can take it private and capitalize on those eyeballs he'll make out like a bandit.

False sense of security.

There have been studies, and more well known, mythbusters did an episode on something very similar (is talking on a cellphone while driving just as bad as drinking and driving), and while mythbusters is a bit hollywood science at times, they confirmed the myth. Texting isn't that far off. And in other studies, is just as bad.

But don't take my word for it, take a look at all the studies and materials.

There's a reason why texting/talking on the phone is rapidly becoming illegal while driving. But hey! Maybe in Nebraska, facts and truths aren't the norm!