Slashdot Mirror

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/03/microsoft-bing-ads-windows-8-1-smart-search/

So this isn't like an ebay auction for 10lbs of crack where the price hits 80m before it gets shutdown because people have realized that its not real? Give me a break. There is a considerable amount of people who have pledged to this and know for a fact that it won't get funded. This is a nebulous speculative design that may or may not be awesome in a years time. The only thing we know is that it will have 4GB of ram and 128GB of storage. Ok, and for ~700 USD it would likely be seen in today's market as relatively inexpensive, but not ground breakingly so considering the long lead times and other unknown variables. The thing I hate the most about these stories on here is that the fanboys are going to trumpet this as amazing and positive when there is almost nothing about this that could be seen that way. Microsoft did 75x this with Surface and is taking a very public beating for having failed. Samsung sold about 20m units (1,000x as much gross revenue as this project) in only 2 months of the S4 and Apple sold 50m iPhone 5s in it's first quarter. The market as a whole can't even distinguish if this is signal or noise.

Time and again projects have come along to 'revolutionize' smart phones. Remember the original Google Nexus? It was such a failure that Google licensed off the brand and is now relying on other companies to make the hardware. The F1 analogy is also bullshit. The difference is that the F1 people are actually using spectacularly unique hardware (and software) to do things orders of magnitudes faster than a regular joe could and can do it in a clear way that is exciting and spectator friendly and as such can be dramatically subsidized by tickets, merchandizing and tv rights. If there were a market for performance luxury phones the $10,000 Vertus wouldn't be absolute shit. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/12/vertus-first-android-smartphone-will-cost-7-900-euros/

Lets backtrack a bit to the MS post when they released the new youtube app.

We’ve released an updated YouTube app for Windows Phone that provides the great experience our consumers expect while addressing the concerns Google expressed in May, including the addition of ads," a Microsoft statement notes. "We appreciate Google’s support in ensuring that Windows Phones customers have a quality YouTube experience and look forward to continuing the collaboration.

Note the parts in bold. MS lied, they didn't address it. So Google saw MS thumbing their nose, went WTF, got pissed off and blocked it .

We're committed to providing users and creators with a great and consistent YouTube experience across devices, and we've been working with Microsoft to build a fully featured YouTube for Windows Phone app, based on HTML5. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service.

MS gets slapped with its hand caught in the cookie jar and then admits that its 'new' app did not comply with Google's request that it be in HTML5 :-

For this reason, we made a decision this week to publish our non-HTML5 app while committing to work with Google long-term on an app based on HTML5.

Note that the new app was pushed out without Google's approval, unlike what they implied. Typical MS arrogance and lies at work. I feel sorry for any Winph8 users caught in the crossfire, but MS does not deserve any sympathy in this matter.

It seems to me a bit frivolous to be connecting lights, toilets, refrigerators and whatnot to wireless technology.

"Xbox Live Family Plans get converted to individual memberships starting August 27th":
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/10/xbox-live-family-plan-shutdown/

In some scenarios, things are getting more expensive on the Green side, it seems.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/

The rules are changing.

Check they news! http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/ One gold account per Xbox one will allow everyone to access the services.

Microsoft announced today that you'll only need one gold account per device (and it can actually be shared between a 360 and Xbox One).

http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/

No offense intended, but this isn't a review. Come again after you've actually used it.

Personally, I do not intend to buy the new Nexus 7 at least until it will be possible to build AOSP for it (but I might go out and buy the old one now :-). That said, I have nothing for or against it.

All I'm saying is that your comment did not add information. The comment you'll write in 24 hours likely will, however.

Shachar

The old Nexus 7 is an amazing thing. I had bought the 3G version on a whim and immediately regretted it. I did all my mobile computing on an Asus Transformer Prime, took it everywhere with me and really couldn't justify buying another toy. Long story short: I carry my Nexus 7 around with me all the time and my Transformer stays at home.
I WOULD have bought the Nexus 7 if there wasn't that AOSP bruhaha. We've been warned for months and still we get a Nexus device that isn't supported by AOSP because of proprietary drivers which won't even be released in binary form. And now this happens: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/07/aosp-maintenance-head-leaves-role-in-wake-of-open-source-issues/
This feels wrong on so many levels.

Compared to?

According to TFA, it's "up to 9 hours." The original Nexus 7 had 10 hours, so it's an hour less. But considering it has to drive that Retina-like display, it's pretty darn good.

Battery life as tested in a lab, rather than leaving it up to the manufacturer.

Tablet Battery Life
Nexus 7 (2013) 7:15
Apple iPad mini 12:43 (WiFi)
Apple iPad (late 2012) 11:08 (WiFi)

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/29/nexus-7-review-2013/

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/26/apple-three-year-low-smartphone-marketshare/

Android has 80% of the smartphone market and Apple has 14%, down from 18% last quarter.

Global smartphone shipments grew 47 percent to hit 230 million devices in the second quarter of 2013, according to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics. And Android captured record market share of 80 percent. Apple iOS reached 14 percent global smartphone share in the quarter.

Microsoft has 4%.

In China, Apple overtaken by Xiaomi in smartphone rankings

And it's only going to get worse for Apple, as the company just announced the Red Rice smartphone, a pretty decently spec'd model priced at a mere 799 yuan ($130). For that pittance, Chinese buyers will get quite a bit: a quad-core MediaTek CPU, 4.7-inch 720p screen (312 ppi) with Gorilla Glass 2, 1GB RAM, 4GB storage, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA 3G, dual-sim / dual standby capability, an 8-megapixel rear camera and Xiaomi's MIUI-flavored Android.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/31/xiaomi-unveils-the-red-rice-smartphone/ [engadget.com] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046019/in-china-apple-overtaken-by-xiaomi-in-smartphone-rankings.html [pcworld.com]

Oddly enough, Slashdot does not consider this to be news.

Android has 80% of the smartphone market and Apple has 14%

Global smartphone shipments grew 47 percent to hit 230 million devices in the second quarter of 2013, according to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics. And Android captured record market share of 80 percent. Apple iOS reached 14 percent global smartphone share in the quarter.

Microsoft has 4%.

In China, Apple overtaken by Xiaomi in smartphone rankings

And it's only going to get worse for Apple, as the company just announced the Red Rice smartphone, a pretty decently spec'd model priced at a mere 799 yuan ($130). For that pittance, Chinese buyers will get quite a bit: a quad-core MediaTek CPU, 4.7-inch 720p screen (312 ppi) with Gorilla Glass 2, 1GB RAM, 4GB storage, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA 3G, dual-sim / dual standby capability, an 8-megapixel rear camera and Xiaomi's MIUI-flavored Android.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/31/xiaomi-unveils-the-red-rice-smartphone/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046019/in-china-apple-overtaken-by-xiaomi-in-smartphone-rankings.html

Oddly enough, Slashdot does not consider this to be news.

Engadget's preview claims that any custom Moto X ordered from their Moto Maker site comes with an unlocked bootloader. I'm guessing carrier-sold phones would have a locked one.

The next big opportunity for LTE-related upgrading business is China, Ericsson having cashed in huge in the United States. What China desperately wants is for the TD-LTE variant that is being deployed on China Mobile to become an equal alternative to the FDD-LTE already deployed in say the US. They are willing to let the Europeans cash in and not just leave the business to home-grown companies such as Huawei, showing how eager the Chinese are becoming for European assistance.

This will probably hurt their campaign to bring Ubuntu to mobile.

Their kickstarter at Indiegogo already seems to be slowing down.

Not quite fair to link a forum breach to Ubuntu, but public perception is what matters.

Is this a preview of what might happen to Linux distros at some point in the future? Android has had a bigger impact than anyone expected. I wouldn't be surprised if it leads to Linux becoming more marginalised (servers only) and fewer people adopting it on the desktop.

Quite possibly, with AIOs like this coming out now in September, 21" IPS touchscreen, keyboard and mouse using Android. It'll take a while before the OS and apps catch up, but fundamentally this is what most people are looking for in a "real" computer, it's not the CPU, not the GPU, not the RAM it's a big screen, keyboard and mouse. It's the kind of PC you can crank out a novel at or work on a big spreadsheet (not in Excel, but there are alternatives), anything where it's not about x86 compatibility or computer horsepower. That said, the big migration potential is certainly Windows users but if there's a landslide like in the mobile market Linux is sure to notice it too.

The last major Android update applied to Nexus phones was 4.2.2, which rolled out in Februrary. If you haven't gotten an update in six months, something is wrong with your setup. My Nexus phone has also gotten multiple revamps to various Play applications in the last few months, which was most noticeable to me in a complete redesign of the Play Music application. The last update there I know of was a month ago. I'm not certain what form (if any) the fix for this exploit has been pushed to the phones yet--could be a core update or fix in a play app--but your claim that they haven't changed anything recently isn't true.

It's interesting that this is the second story about a failed master planned eco-city in Florida this month.

Full disclosure: I work for Nextera Energy. Parent Company of Florida Power & Light which this story references.

The SCOTUS has ruled that format shifting falls under fair use

Fair use is a defense only to copyright infringement. One can commit circumvention without infringing the copyright itself. Universal v. Reimerdes. I will confess to a crime right here: I have used VLC to rip CSS'd DVDs for private use and for inclusion of short clips in criticisms.

Or how many had to hunt for the older PS3s if they wanted backwards compatibility which isn't a problem on the PC?

Is Windows 7/8's compatibility with Windows 95 games better than the PS1 emulator in the PS3 and PS4?

I can fire up an emulator and in seconds be playing the very first game I EVER owned, Pong

When you build a PC for someone who owns a copy of Pong for Atari 2600, how do you recommend that he copy his Atari 2600 cartridges into the PC?

But with win 7 and Win 8 being the same price its really a moot point

You can't install Windows 7 OEM on a PC that you plan to use yourself; you have to get your PC builder to install it for you. This "Personal Use License" is another new feature in Windows 8.

nobody gives a rat's ass about GDDR 5, okay? NOBODY.

Thank you. For each "nobody builds an HTPC" I can cite your "nobody cares about GDDR5 as main system memory".

I can also quadruple my HDD space, add SSDs if I want

Also true of PS3 and PS4. Even the maligned Xbox One will support external HDDs and SSDs that connect through SuperSpeed USB.

As for how DRM gets in the way, did you not pay attention to the xbone? Or that Sony has a similar mechanism that devs can opt in for?

I thought that soon after Microsoft announced this originally planned antifeature of Xbox One, Sony announced that it would not implement this mechanism for disc games.

and WTF are you talking about raiding parts for?

To afford to build a console-competitive HTPC for the price of a console. Too may people see the sticker price of the system and don't want to pay 21.9% interest to borrow the money to have a local PC builder build a brand new HTPC.

....about cloud computing is that Deutsche Borse is opening a Cloud Exchange, in a few months, to essentially commodify cloud computing, which would allow the same activities to take place as those oil/energy and other commodity exchanges: speculate prices upwards, various financial manipulation, etc.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/04/deutsche-borse-to-open-cloud-exchange/

The super-rich want to extract every last drop from us, including exerting control over the Web.

Yes, and each incarnation leaves gullible first adapters with expensive toys laying around that they can never use. Or maybe they buy up few movies 3D and watch them over and over again just to convince themselves it wasn't such a dumb purchase after all. (Like laserdisks).

The problems of 3D TV are never going to be solved with a flat image plane. We've been through this before. When manufacturers have to warn kids away from their product (even if the warnings turned out to be overwrought), you should probably realize that there is something less than optimum going on. And when movies that were never shot in 3D start appearing in 3D you know the effect is all computer generated an guaranteed to be sub-optimum. In fact if you need special glasses to view 3D TV you know its less than optimum before you even see it.

This idea will work someday, when we get multi-planar TV sets or holographic displays that you can actually walk around and view from different angles. That's not likely to be a technology you hang on your wall. Because faking depth really doesn't work very well, and the resistance to wearing the glasses is significant.

Tesla victory in NC

go figure...once they go on test drive....they love it.

Looks like 7 will be supported... eventually

I'm fairly certain that there will be controllers that serve your need, just like there were controllers for PS3.

For example:http://www.amazon.com/Rocketfish-Bluetooth-Wireless-Controller-PlayStation-3/dp/B003AKMS0C/
http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Elite-Wireless-Controller-Playstation-3/dp/B003V4AK8E/

Or you can just get your tools and make 360 controller into PS3 controller. Though this probably won't quite work for PS4, as it will lack PS move LED.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/01/how-to-make-a-ps360-controller/

Yup. If you like Google Voice, don't upgrade to Hangouts yet. I did so a while ago, and admittedly, Hangouts is pretty cool, but it comes with a surprise: it takes away your ability to make outbound GV calls in the GMail interface. Fortunately there was an option to downgrade to the old chat interface.

Engadget says that the phone calling feature will be returned in Hangouts 'soon'... http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/20/hangouts-upgrade-disables-outbound-google-voice-calls-in-desktop/

I don't disagree with you on the merits of the x264 encoder (open source, etc) but are you sure that x.264 is free? Because it seems from this webpage that you need to pay for a licence to use it.

Also, from the H.264 standard itself is not free. The party who makes the encoder and the party who distributes the encoded file to the end users for commercial use has to pay for licensing.

Although H.264 is an open standard, in that it was developed by a consortium of companies and anyone can make and sell an encoder or decoder, it's not free -- you've got to pay for a royalty fee to use it, and the rates are set by the MPEG-LA, which collects payments and distributes them to its members.

V8 and V9 are not the same. V8 itself may have a bad history and be a crap codec, performance wise. Is V9 a bad codec as well, performance wise? Has Google done anything that justifies the wholesale boycott of V9?

WTF are you talking about. Wii U isn't doing that great because of it's high price relative to horsepower, but the 3ds is doing better than the DS has to date by a million units, and the original DS was the best selling handheld console to of all time. The Vita is the portable that's flopping. I think it's cracked a million units but just barely. There's no doubt Sony will win the console war with MS, but I wouldn't count the Wii U out of the race already. It's not too late for a price drop and when Nintendo releases new first party titles like Zelda their market share will increase. Once that happens, developers will target the platform more, even if it means increased development costs.

Microsoft has always supported the effort. They were the ones who called law enforcement to work about stolen phones. They really cared for customers, imo.

They may have always supported the effort, but they were far from the first in calling for fixes to stolen phones.

The universal IMEI/MEID blocking, long in effect in most of the world has been fought tooth and nail by the carriers.

Because they they earn additional revenue when you come in and buy a new phone after you get mugged, they had no
interest in setting up and maintaining such a database. It was less than a year ago that they finally agreed to build such a blacklist. This plan could work for existing phones, even dumb phones.

Rather than give that time to work, they now contrive to call it a failure, and they now want to launch a whole new requirement, and get everyone to buy a new phone in order to be included in the "protected group".

There are those that insist that you can simply and easily flash a new IMEI on a phone, but it is not as simple as some would have you believe, that the guy in the hoodie who knocks you down and grabs your phone doesn't have the skill set to do so.

With a blocked IMEI you can unblock it if it is recovered if you can prove to the carrier that you are the rightful owner. With a kill switch, you are screwed. There is little incentive to report a lost or stolen phone, since it ruins any chance of recovery. It will still require replacement once you report it, even if you find it at your friends house where you left it after the party.

iPads and androids I won't because they really are just large screen cellphones,

Then you'd be making a mistake.

The Asus Transformer range showed that Android was excellent as a convertible netbook/mini notebook. Now Acer is releasing a full-sized ( 21.5-inch) Android All-in-One pc, and there's rumours of many more in the pipeline. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/24/acer-Smart%20Display-DA220HQL-hands-on/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57581500-92/android-notebooks-yep-intel-says-and-theyll-only-cost-$200/
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/14/motorola-mobility-launches-hmc3260-cloud-streamer/

There's still gaps in applications and perpiherals that'll keep some businesses on Wintel for a little longer. Unless MS can pull something a LOT better than W8 out of it's hat, though, I'd say the trickle will very quickly become a landslide.

iPads and androids I won't because they really are just large screen cellphones,

Then you'd be making a mistake.

The Asus Transformer range showed that Android was excellent as a convertible netbook/mini notebook. Now Acer is releasing a full-sized ( 21.5-inch) Android All-in-One pc, and there's rumours of many more in the pipeline. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/24/acer-Smart%20Display-DA220HQL-hands-on/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57581500-92/android-notebooks-yep-intel-says-and-theyll-only-cost-$200/
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/14/motorola-mobility-launches-hmc3260-cloud-streamer/

There's still gaps in applications and perpiherals that'll keep some businesses on Wintel for a little longer. Unless MS can pull something a LOT better than W8 out of it's hat, though, I'd say the trickle will very quickly become a landslide.

if they were designing a case to be physically cool (rather than for aesthetics) it would look like this... http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/06/thermalrights-computer-case-is-all-cooling-all-the-time/

Are you trolling or just stupid?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2020725/apple-macbooks-lead-in-laptop-features-and-reliability.html
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/

So...shut the fuck up. I fix and sell laptops at my shop. You have no idea what you're talking about.

They should just charge a $5 fee and mail it to you if you don't want it destroyed.

It is kind of silly, though. Post 911, nobody can take over a plane with a few knives. The only reason to not allow them is that they can result in more injuries on a plane, but that seems so unlikely as to not be terribly persuasive.

I once walked into a secure federal building with a knife by accident; the guards thought about it and then didn't care. Which is really the right result.

I've seen self-service mail kiosks in some airports where you can mail your prohibited items to yourself. You still would have to get back out of the security line to get back to the Kiosk, but if you have something valuable it's probably worth it. So far I've only lost 99 cent nail clippers but I think those are allowed now.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/04/airport-kiosks-let-travelers-mail-off-limits-items/

I thought it was running Window 8 and/or Android on same system; nope.
Detachable screen is in fact an andoid tablet; when you plug it into the 'docking station' that's actually a full-spec Win PC sitting in the keyboard / chassis.
If your use cases including running both a tablet and an ultra-PC, could be temping I guess, but hardling a tech breakthrough.

Try these for more info:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/03/asus-announces-the-transformer-book-trio-likens-it-to-a-laptop/

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/157253-asus-unveils-dual-os-dual-cpu-jekyll-hyde-transformer-book-trio

It's not exactly what I'd call "high resolution" (it's 1366x768 horizontal, 768x1366 vertical), but it is USB-powered and portable (15.6" diagonal, 3.4 pounds):

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/hp-u160-usb-monitor/

Isn't this the one the OP was complaining about?

"I've looked at a few of the USB powered external displays, but the resolution seems to only hit 1366 X 768."

Sounds like they want more than that resolution. They must have implanted microscope lenses...

It's not exactly what I'd call "high resolution" (it's 1366x768 horizontal, 768x1366 vertical), but it is USB-powered and portable (15.6" diagonal, 3.4 pounds):

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/hp-u160-usb-monitor/

Ok, so 4K is marketable as a PPI gambit. This makes a lot more sense with your application. The problem is that 4K has to be mass market to drive down the price of such a thing and as we saw with 90s Apple hardware, the application won't drive it.

Why are you citing incidents from the 1990s? Look at the last couple of years. Apple already has driven high-DPI "Retina" displays into the mainstream. Yes, they are currently a premium product on laptops, but on tablets and smartphones, DPI far higher than the desktop norm is now standard across the industry. And Samsung is preparing a 3200x1800 laptop display – clearly they think there is some demand here.

I think portable devices really have changed the game. Once you've used a iPad 4 for a while, the low DPI on a PC monitor really looks blurry and crappy in comparison. I don't think it's a stretch that desktop and laptop users going forward will want the same high display quality that they have gotten used to on their smartphones and tablets.

Perhaps Tesla is starting to learn what PR is about. However Elon Musk's response to the last road test was defensive and rude. Elon Musk may be a genius and a useful slave driver when it concerns production, but in PR he is an idiot who cannot be allowed to speak publicly. Many excellent engineers have the same trait. The later analysis done by others is more cool-headed.

Regardless of all that, the exit clause of "deliberate abuse" of the battery is pretty open-ended. Who determines if the battery was abused? I should actually rephrase: who is the only person|company on the planet that can come to such conclusion? In other words, I do not trust Tesla because for all their company history they attacked the messenger and stuck him with a bill. To compare, a Prius's NiMH battery is unconditionally, short of a crash, warrantied for 10 years. Very few batteries ever went bad, and in each case the batteries were replaced by Toyota under warranty. I have reason to trust Toyota in this aspect because they do what they promise.

It's interesting to note that concerns about longevity of Prius's battery were also voiced on the Internet, just as they are now voiced about EVs. There was only one process that alleviated those concerns, and that was personal experience of millions of car owners. For example, without those owners we would have never learned that the heat in Arizona significantly hurts Leaf's performance. Per Nissan, it would be all peachy.

Seriously? You recommend this much overkill?

Well, of course that's not feasible. But an EV in the garage, plugged into 240V, 100A circuit is a dangerous thing. There were several fires caused by a plugged Volt (and more that were not caused by a Volt that was in the same garage.) There was even fire in a parking lot, with Karma. Batteries are dangerous things; one of my friends charged batteries for radios, and he had to do it in an enclosure that protected everyone from explosion if it were to happen. Boeing got hit with battery fire, as were several notebook manufacturers. Gasoline fire, on the other hand, is rare, unless the car is destroyed in a wreck - then all bets are off. Gasoline will not self-ignite; but a battery can; a plugged charger that is capable of 100A charge current is just one p-n junction away from a spectacular failure; and there are many of those junctions in a charger, and they all were made by the lowest bidder somewhere between Taiwan and Philippines.

checking to see that the car is still charging once a month would be more than sufficient.

I'm not so sure. If the power fails one week after the caretaker checks it, the battery in a Roadster will be a brick by the next visit. As you say, Tesla may have fixed this, I don't know, but that's what killed those Roadsters. Tesla is adamant that their EVs must be always plugged in, hell or high water. (BTW, how do all these EVs react to being submerged? If a car falls into a river, what happens? A gas car just stalls.)

This article confirms that both the CPU and GPU are based on AMD designs. Which means it will be an "8-core" CPU the same way the Bulldozer is 8-core: technically true if you only care about integer instructions, but it's more accurate to say there are four modules than eight cores.

That would be true if the article confirmed that it was using a derivative of the Bulldozer CPU core. Instead, it confirms that Microsoft selected the Jaguar core, which is a much different design that is not based on modules at all, and has no support for multiple threads per core (that I'm aware of). So it's eight full cores. But they're not very powerful cores, especially by Bulldozer standards.

Both Microsoft and Sony chose this core for their new consoles because it makes more sense than a relatively heavy desktop core like Bulldozer. It uses far less power and die area per core. A game console needs most of the chip's area and power budget allocated to the GPU, not the CPU.

Actually, it is a mistake. They are using 28 nm. More details here: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-hardware-and-specs/

This article confirms that both the CPU and GPU are based on AMD designs. Which means it will be an "8-core" CPU the same way the Bulldozer is 8-core: technically true if you only care about integer instructions, but it's more accurate to say there are four modules than eight cores.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the Xbox One SoC is basically a customized, jumbo-sized version of AMD's Trinity APU.

"Though Microsoft has yet to announce a specific launch date or price point for the system"

Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple's style of announcements, but "shipping today" or "shipping by date X" and "price will be $Y" shouldn't be that hard to commit to, otherwise don't bother me with how great you're planning to make this wonderful new gadget. This announcement is premature. They should have done it in the fall or been bold enough to state a price now. Or just waited until E3 in the first place.

More detailed specs at Engadget. It's an AMD Jaguar-based core with an integrated GPU (with on-die 32MB graphics as some kind of cache?), hence the huge number of transistors.

It all sounds very nice, but until a price is stated it is impossible to assess whether it is a good deal, and I've seen nothing mentioned about the rumored "always connected" requirement, which would make it uninteresting to me at any price.

That's the heat sink, AC. "Wed128" is correct, you would have to swap out the mother board completely. Or buy the Ouya2, Ouya3, etc. Engadget covers that issue... http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/07/ouya-annual/

CC.

In 2007 we were using "A single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 256k DSL lines or 195,000 56k telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.". The Wikipedia page doesn't seem to have any real updates since 2007. Of course traffic has increased since then, but I doubt they bother to store streaming video of Justin Bieber from YouTube - which is reputedly 98% of all bandwidth consumption apart from pron.

  What was the size of the LHC storage by the way? Oh, that's right, in 2010 it was "About 50PB of tape storage, handled by a set of robotic storage hardware. Still, they've been finding that disk storage is working well, and have scaled that up to 20PB worth of storage." http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations/

However the good news is that in 2011 "Our annual data consumption was estimated at 9.57 zettabytes" on the internet. A difference of 21-15=6 orders of magnitude. http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/07/our-annual-data-consumption-estimated-at-9-57-zettabytes-or-9-57/ So unless NarusInsight can find and throw away a million times more Bieber than your snarky comments on Sub Reddit, "Revolutionary rodents against the government" they don't have that on disk yet, But they could probably record all telephone conversation.

I seem to recall that rumor used to have it that only all calls in and out of the USA were monitored, it would not be at all surprising to find that the capability to monitor all internal calls were available. The only reason it might not be happening is that the transcontinental calls route through a finite set of fiber or satellite links, whereas call data on the internet in the USA could route through a very much higher set of nodes that would need to be monitored to capture the data.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/12/seiki-50-inch-4k-1300/

$1300 for a 4k display. Granted, it's locked to 30Hz, but for most of us 60Hz will be as fast as we need to go (though we'll get more for that god-awful 3D crap they keep trying to push). 4k @ 50 is very close the 2560x1600 30" monitor I have for pixel size, which is fine enough for me at my working distance.

We stalled at 1920x1080 because every moved to TV production. Now that 4k/8k has broken free, we can get over that hump. Not saying there aren't hurdles, but the consumer-limit has been breached and I expect the next to years to result in a shift. Note: there is no material broadcast at 60 frames at 1080, but people are all bonkers over 240Hz displays anyway. They'll be the same ones who wanted 1080p devices to watch their (upscaled) DVDs.

clunky tablets look to have the shelf-life of DVD players

DVDs have had solid usage in my household for over a decade, and smartphones have been wildly ubiquitous for like 6 years (and don't seem to be going anywhere soon).

Wearable computing definitely seems like the direction we're ultimately going in, but even over the next few years it'll probably be more an extension of a smartphone than a replacement for it. Also, video/ebooks/web browsing (all of which are far better on tablets than smartphones) probably won't move over to wearable computing until stuff like this becomes mainstream.

Five years is a very long time in computing

In terms of computing power, yes. In terms of general platforms, not really, no.

Last I heard, a leak suggests that office is being ported to android.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/10/microsoft-office-ios-android-roadmap-leak/

My kid doesn't touch guns. Period. If he sees one, anywhere, he tells an adult immediately.

Said every parent of every child that found a gun and discharged it. Amazingly few numbers of kids manage to shoot themselves or their friends when no gun is present in the home. Strangely enough guns are incredibly hard for kids to find out on the streets.

That cute 4 digit pin code you key in? You kid knows it.

4 digit pins are generally anniversaries, birthdays, or the last 4 of your SSN. Even assuming you're using a unique code, at your "release the gun in under a second" rate it would only take your kid at most 167 minutes to crack your code. Gun safety is very important but you're being a naive douchebag if you believe your kids, when left home alone, are not busily cracking the code to the most interesting object in the house, the porn blocker on the internet. But after they master the art of hacking computer passwords your silly little gun lock is trivial to defeat.

Now maybe if your kids are paranoid idiots they'll leave the safe alone and do only what you tell them, but if there is even a glimmer of curiosity that you haven't yet crushed out of them then they will find and play with your guns when you're not looking, regardless of what you've taught them, because they're kids and that's what kids do. They make trigger locks and cable locks for a reason. But even those are easily defeated. The only truly "child-safe" gun is the one that is not in the home.