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http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/04/comscore-february-2013/

Android subscribers: 51.7%
iPhone subscribers: 38.9%

Apple can at best claim a short term reversal of an alarming trend (for it) in the US market at the cost of significantly reduced margins. In other news, Apple is getting hammered in the world market. China is turning into a major disaster for Apple, and will soon be a larger market for smartphones than the US.

Really:

"Q3 2013: the company is reporting $20.49 billion in revenue, lower than what it saw during the holidays, and an equally soft $6.06 billion in profit that dipped below both the previous quarter and the same period last year." http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/18/microsoft-posts-q3-2013-earnings/

Keep smoking that microsoft crack...

Android users got scammed enough when they bought a fucking Android device.

It might seem like a scam, but you really do get great value smart phones at realistic prices(and choice). It achieves this by using an free open source OS, and providing a healthy ecosystem of manufactures. Its why 1.5 Million devices are sold daily http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/16/liveblog-google-eric-schmidt-at-dive-into-mobile-2013/ "320 operators, 160 countries, 700,000 apps in the Play Store, and 1.5 million sales / activations of Android every single day. We'll cross a billion towards the end of this year. That gives you a sense of the reach. Android is the primary vehicle of smartphones -- we'll quickly get to the $100 price point, which is the key for those next five billion people looking to get connected."

Its incredible I know. Its why you can get phones like the Samsung's Galaxy S4 which has become the Android phone to wait for. The phone has a slew of new features, including an improved 13-megapixel camera, new software features and it responds to waves and gestures. It also has a 5-inch Super AMOLED 1080p screen.

You can't use google?
Here, here, here, here, and there are many, many others capable of running XBMC and have been around for a long time, many of them even come with the "bonus" you mentioned of a dedicated remote. The ability to do what you are after has long been available.

Sure, however once the speed of the connection from your house to your ISPs PoP gets over a certain speed it stops being a significant factor in the overall user experiance. Other factors including limited bandwidth at the server, bandwidth limitations in the ISPs (both client side and server side) networks, limited speed of your hard drive, human time to select things in the user interface, time for servers to process requests and so-on become the limiting factors on the overall performance.

Gee, I wonder if Sony can possibly come up with a reason why they think multigigabit fiber to the home would be useful?

Wrong!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/27/stephen-hawking-holds-it-together-in-zero-g-vomit-comet/

Article from Engadget (Mentions Japan only): http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/12/nintendo-to-retire-some-wii-network-services-june-28/

Who referenced Nintendo's "Japan" website: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/information/2013/0412.html

And that website in English: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nintendo.co.jp%2Fsupport%2Finformation%2F2013%2F0412.html

what's the problem here?

Alleged 4th amendment viloation

If Microsoft would just offer Windows for a "few dollars", i.e. for a "low enough cost that there was no advantage looking for other competitors to get a better deal" like you say, there wouldn't by any problems.

The problems arises from the facts that a) Microsoft demanded higher prices for a Windows license if the OEMs sold PCs without Windows and b) Microsoft gets money from OEMs on PCs sold that do not included Windows at all. See Wikipedia for references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows

The Findings of Fact in the United States Microsoft antitrust case of 1998 established that "One of the ways Microsoft combats piracy is by advising OEMs that they will be charged a higher price for Windows unless they drastically limit the number of PCs that they sell without an operating system pre-installed. In 1998, all major OEMs agreed to this restriction."[5] Microsoft also once assessed license fees based on the number of computers an OEM sold, regardless of whether a Windows license was included; Microsoft was forced to end this practice due to a consent decree.[9] The decree, entered into in 1994, barred Microsoft from conditioning the availability of Windows licenses or varying their prices based on whether OEMs distributed other operating systems; author Wendy Goldman Rohm said that the decree was effective in allowing Dell and HP to offer Linux computers.[11]

Btw, Windows 8 costs them between 50$ and 100$. Windows 7 costs them between 100$ and 175$.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-RT-Windows-8-Licensing-Supply-Chain-OEM,16267.html
For each x86-based machine, OEMs will have to shell out $80 to $100 USD for using both Windows 8 Pro and Office 2013. For devices packing an ARM-based chip, OEMs will be required to pay between $50 and $65 USD for using Windows RT and Office 13 on each device.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/29/windows-7-oem-pricing-revealed-by-newegg/

This one?

You mean just like they were doubling down on WebOS?

Performance is not an issue

The iPad was launched April 3, 2010 to *nobodies* surprise...nearly a year after Windows 7 which was launched on October 22, 2009.

The iPad had a 1 GHz Apple A4 "system on a chip", has 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB of flash memory, 9.7-inch (1024x768, 132 ppi)...will Windows 7 run on this hardware.

How about this http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/08/acer-iconia-b1-a71-hands-on/ Acer iconia dual-core 1.2GHz Mediatek processor 512MB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage, a 7-inch 1,024 x 600 display launched this year. Will Windows Vista7/8 run on this...how about Windows RT.

Please when you put not sluggish or bloated, you have to face the facts, its going against Android and iOS, and they can run on these specifications, anything higher is gravy. In context of this article Microsoft dropping screen sizes is not enough.

My first thought it that it might be the first non-stop cross-country flight. Not so.

"The cross-country tour will begin in the Bay Area and end in New York, with stops in Phoenix, Dallas and Washington DC in between. Solar Impulse will also land in either Atlanta, Nashville or St. Louis, with the plane and its pilots set to stay in each locale for about a week to ten days to talk about the project before moving on."

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/28/solar-impulse-across-america/

Much smaller though. But very impressive never the less, considering the available technology at that time.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/30/cia-dragonfly-drone-uavs-40-years/

"I like secure boot from a security perspective, and we actually use it to lock down some embedded Linux products I've worked on. As long as savvy users can disable/override/change keys, we get the best of both worlds."

How does it work without using the MS-signed UEFI key

Many phones can work with T-mobile's service over wifi. For me that's at least as good as having a local cell extender.

http://t-mobile-coverage.t-mobile.com/4g-wireless-broadband-service

However, it appears the iPhone may not be able to use this initially.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/26/t-mobile-iphone-no-wifi-calling-feature-enabled/

It's much easier for you to specify your needs as there are hundreds of distros and packages that can be combined. To a first approximation pretty much all linux packages are available for all distributions.

Beyond that, most linux distributions are based off some other distribution. The description of Kubuntu as "Ubuntu, but with the KDE desktop environment" is perfectly descriptive.

So what distinguishes one distro from another? Besides what comes installed by default, the most significant difference is how those packages got there.

Debian is probably the distribution that the greatest number of other distributions are based on. It has a very very long testing cycle; it takes packages years to get into Debian's stable branch. Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, and a shit-ton of things are based on Ubuntu, including Linux Mint.

Red Hat produces the next biggest family of linuxes. Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are more or less analogous to Debian unstable and stable, respectively, but I don't think very many people are dumb enough to try and base a distro on Fedora. CentOS is RHEL with the logo removed, and Scientific Linux is also based on RHEL.

Next up we have Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, and Suse.

I was going to put a joke about Gentoo here, but it's taking a while to compile. Gentoo is a rolling-release distro where most of the packages that you use are compiled on and for your machine. You mention gcc, this is related, but you will probably not ever use it directly. Compiling packages yourself can make them run faster, but it can take a long time.

Arch is a well-documented, rolling release distribution. I'm not sure what else to say about them honestly, but "well-documented" is one of the highest compliments I'm aware of.

Slackware is the oldest and most "unixy" of the distributions. It uses an old bootloader, old unix-style boot scripts, and by default boots to a text terminal. You should use Slackware if you want to retreat into a cave for five years, to emerge with a profound knowledge of unix, a full beard, and a solid opinion on whether emacs or vi(m) is the best text editor. I'm pretty sure these things are highly marketable. No, really.

Suse hasn't failed yet. The last time I checked, they had a wonderful, polished experience, and great admin/configuration tools. I have no idea why they don't have more users, except that there's already a shit-ton of options.

It's probably fair to say that Debian stable, RHEL, and any derivatives will have the longest testing cycle, and fewest updates in any given span of time. There are many more distributions for more specialized purposes, such as BackTrack for pen testing, Puppy for small installations, Bodhi for those seeking Enlightenment. You may have to figure out what you need on your own there.

Whew! Let's take a break for a minute.

All right. So with all that in mind, you can install, as previously mentioned, pretty much all the same stuff on any and every distro.

Here is a guide on desktop environments. If you're a n00b, you're probably going to want one of those.

We also have another guide for more experienced users, or those on resource-constrained systems, that covers some of the more popular window managers. Because sometimes 2GB of gnome libraries gets a bit old. For the truly adventurous, this post covers 30 Window Managers in 30 Days.

Honestly, there's really a pretty limited amount of advice that one can give about using any particular distro. They're all substantially similar. Without any specific information about what you want to use, a recommendation becomes, well, exactly what you were complaining about. "Use XYZ bec

It's much easier for you to specify your needs as there are hundreds of distros and packages that can be combined. To a first approximation pretty much all linux packages are available for all distributions.

Beyond that, most linux distributions are based off some other distribution. The description of Kubuntu as "Ubuntu, but with the KDE desktop environment" is perfectly descriptive.

So what distinguishes one distro from another? Besides what comes installed by default, the most significant difference is how those packages got there.

Debian is probably the distribution that the greatest number of other distributions are based on. It has a very very long testing cycle; it takes packages years to get into Debian's stable branch. Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, and a shit-ton of things are based on Ubuntu, including Linux Mint.

Red Hat produces the next biggest family of linuxes. Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are more or less analogous to Debian unstable and stable, respectively, but I don't think very many people are dumb enough to try and base a distro on Fedora. CentOS is RHEL with the logo removed, and Scientific Linux is also based on RHEL.

Next up we have Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, and Suse.

I was going to put a joke about Gentoo here, but it's taking a while to compile. Gentoo is a rolling-release distro where most of the packages that you use are compiled on and for your machine. You mention gcc, this is related, but you will probably not ever use it directly. Compiling packages yourself can make them run faster, but it can take a long time.

Arch is a well-documented, rolling release distribution. I'm not sure what else to say about them honestly, but "well-documented" is one of the highest compliments I'm aware of.

Slackware is the oldest and most "unixy" of the distributions. It uses an old bootloader, old unix-style boot scripts, and by default boots to a text terminal. You should use Slackware if you want to retreat into a cave for five years, to emerge with a profound knowledge of unix, a full beard, and a solid opinion on whether emacs or vi(m) is the best text editor. I'm pretty sure these things are highly marketable. No, really.

Suse hasn't failed yet. The last time I checked, they had a wonderful, polished experience, and great admin/configuration tools. I have no idea why they don't have more users, except that there's already a shit-ton of options.

It's probably fair to say that Debian stable, RHEL, and any derivatives will have the longest testing cycle, and fewest updates in any given span of time. There are many more distributions for more specialized purposes, such as BackTrack for pen testing, Puppy for small installations, Bodhi for those seeking Enlightenment. You may have to figure out what you need on your own there.

Whew! Let's take a break for a minute.

All right. So with all that in mind, you can install, as previously mentioned, pretty much all the same stuff on any and every distro.

Here is a guide on desktop environments. If you're a n00b, you're probably going to want one of those.

We also have another guide for more experienced users, or those on resource-constrained systems, that covers some of the more popular window managers. Because sometimes 2GB of gnome libraries gets a bit old. For the truly adventurous, this post covers 30 Window Managers in 30 Days.

Honestly, there's really a pretty limited amount of advice that one can give about using any particular distro. They're all substantially similar. Without any specific information about what you want to use, a recommendation becomes, well, exactly what you were complaining about. "Use XYZ bec

"Tiny sliver"? 4M Macs vs 17M iPad vs 26M iPhones Q3 2012 because it was the first result that showed numbers. It's in the same order of magnitude in numbers, and in dollars, you'll note that iPhone/iPad numbers include related services, while the Mac ones do not and it's still 20% of the pie. If that's your definition of a "tiny sliver", then I'm sure you don't mind sending me $5B a quarter. My wallet will appreciate it.

Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/12/facebook-admits-hiring-pr-firm-to-smear-google/

Apple's war against Google
http://www.informationweek.com/development/mobility/apples-war-against-google-time-for-new-t/240002054

Microsoft Wage War on Google
http://www.idfmarketing.com/blog/microsoft-wage-war-on-google/

Microsoft spending 7 figures to revive Gmail smear campaign
http://9to5google.com/2013/02/07/microsoft-spending-7-figures-to-revive-gmail-smear-campaign/

Apparently it does have wireless charging

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/14/Galaxy-S-4-accessories-hands-on/

Maybe ATI is paying them to torment NVidia? ATI have bad open source drivers and NVidia have good closed source ones.

open-source Linux graphics drivers, and they're pressuring hardware vendors with commercial closed-source drivers to support it too.

I think a lot of open source is actually a very elaborate practical joke at NVidia's expense possibly coordinated by an evil genius with an irrational fear of NVidia like Charlie Demerjian. For example Linus himself flipped them off over Optimus support.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/18/linus-torvalds-nvidia-linux/

Other people pointed out that they should use DMA-BUF to do to the copies between the two GPUs in an Optimus system. So they assigned an intern to do that

But that intern was told that they couldn't use it unless they GPL'd their drivers.

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/10/11/1918251/alan-cox-to-nvidia-you-cant-use-dma-buf

Hahaha. I bet his boss went apeshit when he saw that email.

I used to joke that the reason Microsoft had ISV and IHVs supporting them is because they didn't do stuff like this. However with Windows Phone they have adopted Linux style trolling of their ISVs. Windows Phone 7 didn't run C/C++ Win32 applications so everyone had to rewrite in C#. Then on Windows Phone 8 they went back to C++ but a new API, WinRT. C# applications still worked but they wouldn't get access to new APIs.

What happened? Well Skype for example announced they wouldn't support anything after Windows Mobile. So MS bought them. Actually that will save them rewriting too because MS are allowed to run Win32 application on Windows Phone.

They told all the browser makers - Opera, Mozilla etc that even if they rewrote they wouldn't allow the browsers in the store. So they all dropped support for any Microsoft mobile OSs. All the other Windows Mobile ISVs seem to have jumped ship to Android.

What about the IHVs? Well they got Samsung and HTC onboard initially. They told HTC they couldn't use Sense or any of their old Windows Mobile software. Then they promoted Nokia as the saviour of the platform and grumbled that the pre-Nokia IHVs hadn't done a good enough job.

Then again since Windows Phone 7 MS has had a Linux like share of the mobile OS market i.e. 1-2%. By contrast Windows Mobile had 10%+

So it does seem that being a complete dick to your IHVs and ISVs leads to poor support.

So what does it all mean.

I think HTC and Samsung should drop Windows Phone and let Microsoft buy up Nokia as their in house manufacturer. Putting a cellphone into production that doesn't sell is very expensive. They should only support the platform if Microsoft offers act as a buyer of last resort - i.e. if they have n unsold handsets MS should pay n times the street price.

I think NVidia should leave their Linux drivers to interns instead of dropping it for political reasons however. One intern-year per year of effort is basically nothing and it's probably easy to find interns who want to work with Linux.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/12/hearst-president-david-carey-apple-ipad-magazine-interview/

I don't know what you mean by the term "the wireless standards", but both the 802.11 WLAN standards

Example: Ericsson sues Samsung over wireless patents

and H.264

Example: Know Your Rights: H.264, patent licensing, and you

are open standards, and are well-documented in public archives.

So this is really a debate about what an "open standard" is. I side with the idea that open means the specification is freely available and no fees are required to implement it. Wikipedia has a good summary of your usage versus mine:

"The definitions of the term "open standard" used by academics, the European Union and some of its member governments or parliaments such as Denmark, France, and Spain preclude open standards requiring fees for use, as do the New Zealand, South African and the Venezuelan governments. On the standard organisation side, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ensures that its specifications can be implemented on a royalty-free basis.

Many definitions of the term "standard" permit patent holders to impose "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing" royalty fees and other licensing terms on implementers and/or users of the standard. For example, the rules for standards published by the major internationally recognized standards bodies such as the IETF, ISO, IEC, and ITU-T permit their standards to contain specifications whose implementation will require payment of patent licensing fees. Among these organizations, only the IETF and ITU-T explicitly refer to their standards as "open standards," while the others refer only to producing "standards." The IETF and ITU-T use definitions of "open standard" that allow "reasonable and non-discriminatory" patent licensing fee requirements."

I would love to be able to have both something like this Nokia candybar phone with its pleasing form factor and epic battery life, as well as a small tablet that also happened to handle cellular phone calls, if they could both send/receive calls using the same number. I can have more than one phone with the same number in my house, what's so unreasonable about having more than one cellular device with the same number?

.

You are taking it out of context and missing that the 600k and 200k were for different sales periods, December and January.

It was announced the Wii U sold 600k in December, and the 3DS, 360, PS3 all sold better than the Wii U did. Come January the Wii U sold 57k, and everything except the Vita outsold it. The 360 sold over 200k units, which for a console on its last legs is great.

In December, Wii U sold 600k. According to here, the 360 sold 1.4m, easily trouncing the Wii U.

In January, the Wii U sold 57k, while for the same period the 360 sold 200k.

Engadget says that the guy was uncharacteristically hesitant when he made this declaration, implying that it's not the simple games distribution mechanism that we're familiar with. They speculate that there may be a fee or something else involved, or another approval process. Needless to say, if a single player game requires an internet connection there's reason to be suspicious.

Smishing is social engineering.

"Smishing" sounds like something I shouldn't be looking up at work...

Social engineering is used all the time. This is like saying people are sheeple. some form of social engineering is used in a lot of ploys.

Social Hacking

Smishing is social engineering.

I guess I fail to see how this is new. I understand some of the best old school hacks; call the company and talk to the receptionist. If your good you can get information about employees, or other things to start on.

There are glitches: I can't get most video content, and Flash-only sites are inaccessible. However, this ended up being not a big issue. One reason for this is that many YouTube videos play in HTML5 on Firefox. (If you find a video you can't play, try embedding it; this sometimes produces a workable version.) Overall, the playback on HTML5 is better than Flash. There are fewer random slowdowns and stall-outs. On the downside, not every video is in HTML5.

If you're using Firefox, one problem is that they've been very tardy with H.264 support, for ideological reasons. However, they are going to start supporting it in Firefox 22 by default, at least on Windows 7 systems that already have the codecs built in. This should eliminate some of the compatibility issues that have been observed.

Microwaves are PC now as well! http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/09/touch-revolution-puts-android-in-a-microwave-and-makes-an-update/

That is correct. And this FACT begs the question: why the hell do they even bother making consoles? The only reason I can think of is to try to get some extra money from the hardware sale, which ironically is pretty much the reason they've been on the red for the last few quarters. Selling 3DS at a loss and now the wiiU as well just for the sake of the numbers don't really seem like a smart idea. And please don't come with that "unique experience" bullcrap, because all the good Wii and DS games I've played were perfectly playable with more traditional home console and handheld interfaces. Competition is a good thing? Yes as long as there are common standards. In the proprietary format cursed world of gaming consoles I'm rather pay $599 for a single console that can play everything then buying two $299 weaker consoles with fragmented libraries,

I'd really love not having to use emulators to play nintendo 1st/2nd party games(and thank the gaming god for letting nintendo making easily "emulatable" systems), but I'm not spending money, set up time and rack space on a overpriced, outdated hardware piece, with horrendous online and multimedia capabilities.

Needless to say, while I'd rather have nintendo becoming a software developer for Sony and MS consoles, ideally I'd love if they just embraced PC and mobile gaming.

Hardware in spaecraft has to be hardened big time against radiation. Off the shelf junk will NOT work. Just sayin'.

And yet, the HTC Nexus One has passed many of those tests without much problems.

. Your current profits may be good, even your short term profits may be good, but if you are not a tiny niche player, market share matters a lot more since it says something about your future profits.

Fact 1: HP had the largest market share in PCs when they tried to dump their PC division

Fact 2:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/01/strategy-analytics-apple-tops-us-phone-market-for-q4-2012/

The Dish Hopper is somewhat of a joke, It is a way to convert satellite broadcast into streaming - you see, it isn't a DVR at all but a device that requests something be saved for you at Dish Network HQ. Then, later you can have it streamed to you over the Internet. They claim the device is limited to 2000 hours, but this would appear to be an entirely arbitrary number. Since your "saved" content is likely shared with everyone else, why would there be any limit at all?

Do you really think that they are saving a unique copy of Two Broke Girls rather than simply having one that everyone shares?

Unfortunately, it is going to suffer the same fate as all streaming - congestion. We are starting to see streaming degrading because of Internet congestion now and it is only going to get worse as time goes on. Having a faster link from the "head end" to the home isn't going to fix it as long as we have a node configuration where a node feeds a neighborhood - both FIOS and every cable and DSL system utilizes this sort of configuration.

Cox in Phoenix is trying to be forward looking and reducing the number of homes per node from 1000 to 500 and that may help somewhat. But with higher and higher bandwidth expectations (see Netflix recent announcement), once we move into a point where streaming is being done by a large number of households it would have to be more like 100 homes per node - and that isn't going to happen without major restructuring. Major, as in when we moved cable from RF to digital distribution.

Most other cable networks are at 1000 homes per node and maybe 1Gb feed to each node. That means if homes are hoping for 10Mb/sec streaming only a 1 in 10 is going to get it. When we get past 1 in 10 streaming, that is about the end for streaming as a distribution technique.

So how long could the Hopper possibly last? Maybe three years. Maybe. Converting from satellite broadcast to streaming is a silly thing for Dish to be doing as there is no impending collapse of satellite distribution. Sort of like Netflix dropping,or thinking about and quickly forgetting about dropping DVD distribution.

I have three Roku boxes and an Apple TV box. I expect them all to be paperweights in 1-2 years.

No guidelines is what is damaging Android. Too many devices to test for, too many screen sizes, compbinations of buttons etc etc.

Yeah, people hate freedom of choice...

Android claimed 70 percent of world smartphone share in Q4 2012 Mobile

We suspected Android would do well in smartphone market share when Strategy Analytics had Samsung surging ahead in the fourth quarter of 2012, but the firm's newer breakdown of estimated share by OS shows an even larger jump for Google's overall platform -- from 51.3 percent in fall 2011 to 70.1 percent one year later.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/29/strategy-analytics-android-70-percent-share/

I assume when you say "Blackberry needs to..." you mean RIM, and this is just a slip-up, not an indication that you're ignorant of what you're talking about.

But what you're saying is correct, and that is what RIM is doing - any app that has a minimum of sales (fairly low, $1000) will be awarded an immediate guarantee of $10,000 (see this). I assume the fact that you didn't know that is, again, not an indication that you don't know much about the subject you're talking about.

If this is happening to Apple, you KNOW it's happening to everyone else. And I have yet to hear a single report of Samsung doing a similar thing to what Apple is doing now.

Samsung is also under fire for this, but because they use Android and make some of the best Androids, they're the darling of the tech world, so it was mostly buried.

Thoug, to be fair, Samsung looks to be starting to also audit their supply chain to prevent an Apple-like thing from happening to them. Then again, Samsung does have the benefit of experience after seeing what happened to Apple.

If this is happening to Apple, you KNOW it's happening to everyone else. And I have yet to hear a single report of Samsung doing a similar thing to what Apple is doing now.

Samsung is also under fire for this, but because they use Android and make some of the best Androids, they're the darling of the tech world, so it was mostly buried.

Thoug, to be fair, Samsung looks to be starting to also audit their supply chain to prevent an Apple-like thing from happening to them. Then again, Samsung does have the benefit of experience after seeing what happened to Apple.

I don't understand this. Why would you take your inconvenient, expensive to upgrade, battery-sucking tablet and put your SIM card inside it? Then bring a smaller device in case it's too inconvenient to take out your smartphone?

Why not have a small phone with great battery life and core features, then just use it as a hotspot for a tablet? I was looking at wristwatch phones and none of them seem to do this.

A watch-sized 4G hotspot with a tiny watch battery would last about 30 minutes in real life.

This device would do the trick I suppose, but with that baby strapped to your wrist -- it would look more like a court-mandated gps-tracker. And I doubt that's the fashion statement you'd want to go for.

Maybe, but the US State Department banned Lenovo computers from being used for Classified work back in 2006.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/19/state-dpartment-bans-lenovo-pcs-from-classified-work/

They're free to fork it if they want. If google doesn't like it then tough.

Actually, if Google doesn't like it, Samsung will be forbidden to call it Android. This already happened once with Acer. What makes you think Google won't spank Samsung too if necessary?

This whole discussion is irrelevant. Mega doesn't have encryption to protect your data; they have encryption in order to protect themselves from any accusations of actively assisting copyright infringement.

As long as the data is encrypted -- even with a half-assed encryption -- before it hits their servers, they can plausibly deny having any idea what's being uploaded. Additionally, they can logically avoid taking any many actions to prevent copyright infringement that other services offer, thus saving themselves the hassle of responding to millions of automated takedown notices.

I think we just went from "news for nerds" to "news for morons who couldn't find their ass if it wasn't attached" in one post.

Even Google had to wait until there was a technological edge to join the internet provider market, because, quite simply, the natural monopoly ...

(also from my above post) Exactly what novel idea do you think Google stumbled upon when they decided to start their fiber network? I mean, besides, "The customers don't have any other real options, let's just keep screwing them over."

Technological edge?!? No, they just understood that $the_other_guys weren't getting it done, producing an opportunity! The tech has been there for a long time now; practically ages in computing terms.

Google's not magic. They're just smart. "You drop the ball? Then I'll pick it up and run with it."

Yes, that's exactly what I said. As for the technological improvement, Google looked at what was available on the market, and what the incumbents were providing, and said to themselves, "So, we can provide one thousand times the capacity than the other guys are, and they're just sitting on their hands?? I see a market." The technological edge was a higher-capacity network, which the incumbents opted not to pursue. Sure, the other guys had the exact same edge, but as I said above, they were quite happy screwing people over with their existing, 40+ year old pipeline.

As for regulatory capture, I see what you mean. Europe, that free market bastion to the east, has far more competition, better service, and far less regulation. Oh wait...

The MS Kin was a special case.

It wasn't so much that it was a loser that should have been culled; rather, it was destroyed by poor decisions from Microsoft middle-management.

Basically, MS bought a successful company, Danger. Danger's "Sidekick" was a feature-phone with a well-chosen feature mix. Kin was to be the next Sidekick, and it should have been the same success the Sidekick was. The most interesting feature: it was supposed to have a special low-cost data plan. Instead of being a full smartphone, it was going to be a "social media" phone; SMS, Twitter, and Facebook wouldn't put too much load on the data network, so Verizon agreed to offer a special low-cost data plan.

Well, a Microsoft middle manager forced the guys working on the Kin to scrap the old Danger code base, and rewrite everything to Windows CE. After all, Microsoft didn't want to have to support two code bases, right?

But the delay caused by the rewrite was fatal. The special low-cost data plan evaporated (Verizon was pissed at the delays), and instead of being a low-cost phone with a low-cost data plan, it became a phone that cost about the same as other phones, and had a data plan exactly as expensive as other phones, but wasn't a smartphone so the built-in apps couldn't be added to. That last was really stupid: since the Kin guys were forced to rewrite to Windows CE, it should have been possible to put a Windows Phone app store on the device, and the Kin team wanted to do it. They were denied, again a stupid decision by MS management (and I guess internal MS politics).

Had the Kin shipped 18 months earlier, even 12 months earlier, with the less-expensive data plan? It should have been a big hit like the Sidekick. Had it shipped as a smartphone with an app store, it might have had some sort of a chance. But as a featurephone that cost like a smartphone, it was instantly doomed.

So yeah I guess MS should have culled it rather than endured the embarrassment around the Kin disaster. But better still they should have had less broken decision-making by their own middle management.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/a-post-mortem-of-kins-tragic-demise/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/02/life-and-death-of-microsoft-kin-the-inside-story/

Zuck said that Facebook spends 3 percent of their CPU power on privacy. With such a low CPU budget dedicated to something as important as users' privacy, it's no wonder they do such a poor job of it.

I read 10%, not 3%:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/15/facebook-graph-search/

What would you consider to be a more reasonable amount of CPU budget to spend on excluding search results from some queries? I'm surprised it's as high as 10%, but I never really thought of CPU usage as a metric for privacy protection.

Jobs never said that iPhone ran OS X.

Jobs said exactly this at the original iPhone keynote, to tech journalists and Apple customers (the only people who watched that sort of thing in those days). Not just developers. Developers weren't even allowed on iPhone back then, so I don't know how you remember that it was specifically targeted toward developers. From the keynote:

iPhone runs OS X! Why would we want to run such a sophisticated OS on a mobile device? It's got everything we need. Multitasking, networking, power management, graphics, security, video, audio, core animation... It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones. These are real desktop applications.

Emphasis mine. He unequivocally stated iPhone runs OSX. This was further emphasized on Apple's website under the original iPhone product page, which I think you will agree is targeting consumers, not developers:

iPhone uses OS X, the world’s most advanced operating system. Which means you have access to the best-ever software on a handheld device, including rich HTML email, full-featured web browsing, and favorite applications including Address Book and Calendar. iPhone is also fully multi-tasking, so you can read a web page while downloading your email in the background. This software completely redefines what you can do with a mobile phone

Emphasis mine. So again, from the start, Apple was saying iPhone OS = OSX. Then they went back and changed a single letter, calling it iOS. My girlfriend still gets confused about the difference. So I'm not saying Windows 8 vs. Windows RT isn't confusing, but I think it's a leap to say iOS vs. OSX is crystal clear.

I just hope the MS Surface Pro has touch sensitive pen, and it'll be done.

It has one. It looks pretty interesting. I might pick one up if the price tag comes in under four figures.

All touch devices have lag, including iOS, and it's significant. Anyone that's tried to draw using these devices knows this. Check this out: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/10/microsoft-cuts-touchscreen-lag-to-1ms/