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Lol! I think you're right. And had it worked out he might have gotten a Nobel for this. I have a netbook too, but seriously, wouldn't you want one of these? http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/27/olpc-xo-2-to-include-multitouch-and-possibly-haptic-screen-from/

That is because the average Joe don't know squat about OSes, hell they often can't even tell you WHAT OS they are running (I often get "Windows something" when I ask which OS a customer is running) but believe you me they DO notice when their (insert Quickbooks/Quicken, Cheapo Lexmark all in one, puzzle games they picked up at Wally World, etc) don't work. There is a REASON why MSI was looking at 400% return rates on their Linux netbooks, I know because I had the same thing happen when I tried selling Linux.

Here is what happens-You explain to Joe about how easy it is to get free software with Linux, show him how to use synaptic, tell him to check hardware compatibility before buying extra junk. He promptly goes to Wally World, or Worst Buy and goes "Oooh...sale!" and buys whatever PC junk o' the day is on sale. When he gets it home and of course it doesn't work so the PC comes back with Joe expecting you to "fix it" which of course you can't, because Linux drivers for the kind of stuff you get at Wally World is pretty much non existent. So you either A-burn the customer, in which case he spreads the word and soon you are out of business, or B-you take back the machine and eat the difference between what it sold for new and what you can get for it used.

I know the Linux guys will hate me for saying this, but you know why I am really grateful for Linux? Because thanks to Linux MSFT is having to stop acting like giant douches when it comes to pricing. If it wasn't for Linux the "MSFT tax" would be crazy, and the cheapest Win7 would probably be a couple of hundred just for the upgrade. I mean look here at a $298 Vista Basic notebook with an actual discrete GPU. you know MSFT can't be getting squat for Vista Basic if they can offer it at that price and still make money. And we can all thank Linux for that, by putting the fear of FLOSS into the Ballmer monkey and making MSFT actually compete.

But to get Linux to "just work" for Joe, they are gonna need native Photoshop, Quickbooks, EA games, drivers for all the little gadgets at Wally World, etc. And sadly I doubt this will ever happen. So Linux will continue to scare MSFT but not actually gain any real ground with the critical home markets. Because it is pretty clear that most companies don't want to play the GPL game, especially after RMS went after TiVo with GPL V3, and without them to give Linux native apps to Joe Linux will be "free as in worthless" to him because he can't get his stuff to run out of the box. And please don't bring up companies like Intel that do, because if you look EVERY major corp that has released has significant server/enterprise markets they are appealing to. The stuff in Wally World don't get sold to server markets and they don't have the kinds of patent warchests the likes of AMD, IBM, Intel, etc have. For the smaller companies to release with all the patent trolls in the USA would be suicide. After all, is RMS gonna indemnify me if I release my driver code and get hit by a patent troll? I didn't think so.

You guys are behind the times! I first read up on salmon sperm luminescence years ago - sheesh!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/11/salmon-sperm-used-to-intensify-leds-grossify-everyone/

I think Apple already covered that:

http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/12/the-ipod-shuffle-do-not-eat-in-the-us-or-chew-in-the-uk/

Or use an Apple notebook. Their products are constantly bursting into flames and exploding.

I hang out with mostly college kids and I have to say that very few of them are wiling or capable to spend $60 on a given title. Even the latest OMGWTFAWESOME titles that have massive cult fanbases (I'm looking at you Halo) can't garner as many sales on a reputation alone when the sequels are just half-assed remakes of the original. As other slashdotters have mentioned, prices are just too high for the crap we are being sold these days.

That being said, I wonder if The EVO can make any headway in this market since, according to that article, games should be roughly $20.00. Start offering gamers a chance to have a new title for the price of a used one and XBox, Nintendo, and Sony may wake up and realize that there is a new kid on the block. Of course, that is assuming that word about the evo gets spread around the population in general.

Cheers.

What is Microsoft doing to stifle Operating System designers? What is Microsoft doing to stifle web browsers?

There are tons of other OSes out there, and tons of other web browsers. Microsoft designed a wildly successful product with supporting software and services. Netscape Navigator works on Windows 98, and the Mosaic browser (which renders most of the web) will still run on any OS that it's been ported to.

Here is a partial list of OSes that support web browsing:
Mac OS
AmigaOS
Any Unix-like with X

Here is a partial list of browsers that run on Windows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars
Navigator
Mosaic
Opera

x86 byte code won't work on PPCs. Unix application's source code doesn't compile in Mac OS. The SNES won't play Sega cartridges. Do I need to go on?

People seem to conflate "trying to make a buck" with anti-competitive practices. We have to draw the line somewhere. The Win98/IE4 franchise is not in itself anti-competitive any more than an auto dealership is- you can buy more than one make of car from one and you can have your car worked on by other mechanics.

!b

PS:
Apple announces ITMS has 88% market share for online music purchases (Sep 2006) : (text) (video)
Apple announces ITMS is #1 music retailer in the US (Apr 2008): (text)

Having just read a quote from Ballmer on Engadget: "I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there, but the last time I checked, you don't need two client operating systems. It's good to have one." Maybe someone should tell him it's good to have one streaming music service, one web search, and one video game console as well. ;)

Yeah that's not going to really work in the United States. AT&T ended their unlimited data plan for GoPhone users back in November of last year. This leaves two data options there, ad-hoc which is 1/KB or the data packages which are 1MB for $4.99 (0.5/KB) and 100MB for $19.99 (0.2/KB). These prices are the same for the GoPhone (pay as you go) and monthly prepaid plans. At those data rates browsing the web is pretty damn expensive. Take the Engadget mobile page, it weighs in at about 128KB without clicking on any of the individual stories. Using the above prepaid prices a single load of the page will cost you either $1.28, $0.64, or $0.25. Using the web on a smartphone isn't terribly attractive if a mobile version of a web page costs you a quarter to view. The RSS feed is about 160KB but at least gives you all the front-page stories in a single go (for $0.32).

Sprint doesn't offer prepaid plans. Verizon has 99 "mobile web" offerings on their pre-paid plans but it doesn't detail what exactly that entails as they also have a $15/day "mobile broadband" plan. Verizon also requires any smartphones to be purchased with a contracted data plan (attached to a voice plan). It makes sense then to assume their 99 "mobile web" is only available on their pre-paid handsets which are most assuredly not smartphones. T-Mobile no longer offers pre-paid unlimited data plans for phones or data cards. The only pre-paid plan they have available is a data plan for the Sidekick.

You can also ask why someone would post flashing images to the epilepsy foundations website http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/29/hackers-embed-flashing-animations-on-epilepsy-support-forum/.

I think Sony figured out the technology here 3 years ago.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/24/sony-ordered-by-japan-to-investigate-battery-problems/

Performance numbers so far show the games to run at the same speed _or_slower_ under Win7.

Google begs to differ: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/25/windows-7-edges-out-vista-for-gaming-in-thorough-benchmark-tests/
However, common sense does tell you not to benchmark a beta OS.

Sanyo-Epson has a 7.1" 1080P display! It's even in color =) link

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/09/gizmondo-chief-finally-arrested-for-being-too-shady/
http://gizmodo.com/tag/ferrari-enzo/

Another puzzling design choice involves PDF support. For the most part it works well with standard size pages, but there's no zoom, so you're stuck with however the DX decides to display your file -- the only way to get things bigger is to switch to landscape. Since not all PDF pages fit on the screen, that means you often end up with a weird jumble of page breaks and cut-off content -- it's easy to totally lose the structure of a document or slide deck after a while.

It sounds like reading multi-columnar PDFs would be aggravating.If your PDF isn't multicolumnar, it's better suited for reformatting using Amazon's free PDF conversion service -- and these work on the Kindle 2.

They also complain about a hyper-sensitive orientation sensor, and an awkward keyboard.

Take the iPhone for example. Its used by a lot of people but its nigh impossible to exploit simply because its locked down.

Bullshit. What exactly is all this about? And this?

What do you think jailbreaking is? Older firmware could even do it over the Web.

A while back, there was even a bug that let anyone bypass the lock screen (and the password).

Damn it first link should be this one.

I would say one big problem to go. That problem is platinum. We simply have not been able to eliminate the need for platinum in fuel cells to extract the electricity from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen.

Ah, yes we have.

"Another fun little tidbit - ALL SSD drives are currently in 2.5" format"

Not for long: OCZ Colossues 3.5" SSD

"Try getting 15k rpm hard drive in a 2.5" form factor - you won't."

Uhhh, try again. 15K RPM 2.5" SAS drives have been available for YEARS: HP 72GB 2.5" 15K RPM SAS

...or perhaps they bought one on closeout AS a cheap upscaling DVD player?:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/hd-dvd-players-become-dvd-upscalers-in-format-war-fallout/

Better not tell this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frZTf3mX97c

Which is why I left verizon. When the iphone was first released I was deciding if I should get one. the verizon rep and news media told me that by 2008 verizon would let any phone run on their network.

(for example http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/27/verizon-wireless-opens-network-to-any-apps-any-device-in-2008/ )

So i renewed up with them in hopes of using a good phone by the end of 2008. That came and went so I moved on to a carrier with the phones I wanted to use.

The Chinese aren't known for their cheap ripoffs?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/15/dream-g2-doesnt-get-the-irony-of-ripping-off-an-open-source-os/

I mean only the Chinese would bother to imitate a free to use Phone OS with a mockup UI.

Crab all you want about NVIDIA but they got the goods and the business strategy that put them on top.

Until, that is, millions of their mobile GPU chips keel over from heat death due to improper package bump and underfill construction.

That sounds like some wicked conjecture, have any evidence that this is impending?

I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that this referred to the problem Nvidia had with their mobile chips that led to recalls and product failures. It was fairly well documented. A quick google suggests: this is what he is referring to.

"800x600, 100 lumen (no missing zero there: one-hundred lumen) projector in 2009 A.D., but for the past four weeks, I've used it as my primary display, and come out happy. It has some drawbacks, but it's an impressive little device for its $499 pricetag"

If you liked that, you might want to check out the $100 LED projector.

At that price I'm thinking about having all my walls be projectors, so I can change the colors whenever I like, or have a giant screen.

It's an issue of semantics.

No it isn't. It's a matter of self-entitlement (although saying so results in '-1 Troll').

The providers thought that they were offering unlimited data plans to use with the built in web browsing capabilities of the phone.

Actually, that's exactly what they (Sprint-Nextel in this case) offer. Look at the advertised features. Enter your ZIP Code here to look at the plans, and notice the ones which say Unlimited Data. Click for more information, and read the note about tethering.

Look at the Everything Data plan for example, which (naturally) includes Unlimited Data. Clearly stated, 'Phone as modem or tethering: not included.'

Not unlimited data plans for phones that are connected to computers and used like modems.

I agree completely with this sentence fragment. The providers *knew* (you used the word 'thought' which incorrectly implied that the providers' belief might not be true) that they weren't offering an unlimited data plan for phones that doesn't include tethering but also does include tethering. They knew this because simultaneously not doing it and doing it would break the time-space continuum, a move against which Sprint-Nextel's lawyers highly advised them.

Soon enough there will be enough of an uproar over the ambiguity and the lawyers will get together and come up with some new terms that more clearly define things in favor of the providers.

They already did ages ago in the original advertising and contracts, which suggests that they have read your post and used a time machine. There is currently *no* ambiguity if you read before clicking 'buy' or leaving for the Sprint store. There is *very little* ambiguity if you ask or click one link for 'More Information.' The terms are in favor of both the provider and the customer; Customers may purchase the Phone As Modem plan ($15 per month for a 5GB cap or possibly the Unlimited for $40 if it is still offered) to allow Tethering, a much more resource/bandwidth-intensive, optional feature for the provider to offer. Otherwise, it will cost '$0.03 per kilobyte' to use.

Sprint removed it from their website back in February.

Did you really think that an industry that charges 15 cents for 50 bytes of text (IM) that could easily be stuffed into the header overhead of routine handset-to-tower comms...

Not "could be stuffed into the header overhead", *is*. SMS messages are carried using spare capacity on the control channel (which is used to tell your phone an incoming call's coming in otherwise, and for telling it if it should change to another channel or cell site... in the other direction, the phone uses it to initiate outgoing calls.) Now, they do have it popular enough now that the control channel fills up, and they have to install a second control channel...so the cost isn't really 0 in those areas.

Sprint removed it from their website back in February.

Did you really think that an industry that charges 15 cents for 50 bytes of text (IM) that could easily be stuffed into the header overhead of routine handset-to-tower comms would give you tethering for free? really?

According to the CNET article, Tukwilla is pushed until 2010, and it's going to be 65nm instead of 45 nm. Since Intel has already demonstrated 32nm chips, that means Tukwilla will already be at least two generations behind when it's released. No new chip designs from Sun and Fujitsu decreasing the R&D budget. Sounds like this market is falling behind.

Somehow the flurry of upcoming ARM-Cortex based netbook and MID launches this summer has escaped Slashdot crowds attention
http://www.engadget.com/tag/arm
Intel is gonna be so dead in this segment.

Yeah sure. Now let's see how quick imaginary whiteboard is?

By the way are you talking about this?
http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/06/morse-code-trumps-sms-in-head-to-head-speed-texting-combat/

If so a 13 year old girl with maybe 5 years maximum experience vs someone with around 8 decades of experience is no fair match.

Verizon will let you use ANY device on their network that conforms to the CDMA specifications. See http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/27/verizon-wireless-opens-network-to-any-apps-any-device-in-2008/ This most likely includes the Pre, even without any modifications.

I read that the Palm Pre will hit Verizon in about six months .

While you're right about moving phones between carriers, it doesn't seem to matter in this case.

dev mode enabled using the konami code

That's been working on this since 2004 and has likely been posting about here before?

You mean 720P flash I assume, or, less likely, 480P. 780P isn't a standard high-def resolution.

But, to answer your question, probably the new class of netbook like the Pegatron, which, interestingly enough is running a Freescale processor with an ARM based core. This little netbook also has flash based GPU acceleration (supposedly), is incredibly thin and sports I think 6 hours of battery life.

What's the difference in size between a 16GB chip from whenever the last generation was launched, and a 32GB chip now?M

Not a physical size difference, but the addition of another chip. You'll see there that Apple made a massive order for 8GB chips. I don't know what size they'll be using in the new iPhone, but perhaps they opted for 2 x 8GB (16GB model) for material price reasons and designed their PCB with the space in mind to hold these chips. That means the 32GB iPhone may actually be 4 x 8GB chips. Of course, it may even use 16GB x 2 or even a single 32GB NAND chip... That still doesn't change the non-linear increase in price for fitting more memory in a smaller space... Whether it be the board or the chips themselves.

It's all speculation though, but let's assume they use a higher capacity chip. As it happens, chips near the end of the capacity bell curve tend to be priced almost exponentially higher... It's never a linear increase from start to end. For example, 16GB might be twice as much as 8GB, but 32GB might be nearly three times as much as a 16GB chip. A 64GB might be 6 times the price of a 32GB chip and so on... Whatever the price, 64GB will not be 8 times the price of an 8GB chip. You pay more to have more memory in a smaller space. This is why it may not be the equivalent to just adding the price of *another* $20 16GB sdcard.

I also doubt it is the same memory - it's probably physically smaller and more expensive because of that. Again, you pay a premium for higher memory density.

And of course, I'm not saying any of this is the case -- just trying to offer a different perspective.

They just didn't have an announcement ready.

See the engadget article, while brief confirms its availability http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/08/atandt-well-offer-tethering-on-the-iphone/

Android did it first with Street View. There is nothing unique about the iPhone in this regard, every mobile computer with a camera and a network connection is a viable platform.

And the idea itself is twenty years old. Why does fanboy drivel like this get posted?

> in the cell phone world

In the cell phone *world* perhaps, but when it comes to the USA, Nokia are surely the underdog.

The question also came up when MSN Music stopped...
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/23/microsoft-turns-the-drm-screw-on-msn-music-owners/

...They submitted a patent application for something like this in January 2006 see here. Personally I would prefer to use a discreet webcam.

maybe that's why we haven't seen much of him lately, hes been hard at work on a new iPancreas, which will not only produce insulin but will transmit blood sugar levels to his iPhone via bluetooth

I know you're being funny, but they really did make an app that does that. From: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/live-from-apples-iphone-os-3-0-preview-event/

Now they've brought up Anita Mathew from Lifescan (a Johnson and Johnson company). Please show the iPhone heart surgery app / hardware combo. No... just diabetes testing. This could be cool.

What's the charge? "Impersonating an Apple Device"? What law is that exactly...

If there were a law, these people would have been arrested.

On second thought, maybe we do need such a law... :^)

I'm not Bill Gates. 640K might have been enough for anybody back then, but if he had only said "for now", we wouldn't be having this talk. I have opinions and I'll share them. Most of the time after a few years the market agrees with me.

We're in the technology singularity. Stuff has already gotten silly and it's about to get absurd.

Long before the aforementioned RAM quantity becomes a bottleneck for 99.9% of uses you're going to need faster RAM, a faster CPU (or more CPUs) to talk to it, more channels to talk to it with. We're half a year away from 8 cores per CPU, and 9 months away from 12 cores at most and those platforms are going to come with more RAM channels, and hence even more RAM per server, even without considering that DIMMs are going to hit 16GB soon. Likely it will be much sooner. Between now and then we'll need faster interconnects for inter-node communications, faster storage like this, and faster networking like FCoE (tomorrow, literally). As much as I hate the waste of throwing out year old servers, software makers are making it an imperative by insisting on licensing that defeats the technology value proposition. It may not even be wasteful as each server increment does twice as much with half the power. People who use this stuff are well paid to replace the hardware that lives under these limits frequently because the software costs at least 4 times as much as the hardware.

/and yes, if you use open software you don't have this problem - but you're usually paying per server for support, and that amplifies the incentive to throw out your old gear every year.

The economic contraction has turned out to be the harsh winter that brings forth a summer of great fruit. Everybody in the trade is emptying their cupboard of innovation in the hope of gaining market share, rather than holding it in reserve for a rainy day. Because it's raining now.

What we need now is services that need this extra gear. If somebody doesn't come up with it soon Google's going to shrink down to 90 individual racks in somebody else's datacenters - three per geographic area.

//And no, we're not dumb enough to burn these cycles running the server version of Vista. We get paid to be useful.

OK. Corporations are not human beings. Yes, of course, the law states they are people, blah, blah, but ultimately they are NOT human beings.
A psychological analysis of a Corporation as revealed in the book by same name states they are pathological liars, cheats and worse criminals who have no sense of honor, truthfulness, and honesty.
I don't blame them for it. Its their nature.
Why else would AIG want the money it donated to charity back to pay bonuses to its management?
Why else would Monsanto try to override local laws that prevent GMO foods from being grown locally?
Why does Exxon STILL fight paying compensation for the Valdez disaster and get it overturned even after all these years?
Why do you think Time-Warner and others want to overturn municipalities from providing broadband to their cities and towns where Corporates have refused to set up shop?
Am not paranoid or crazy, and am not part of the left-wing alliance stating ALL corporations are evil, etc.
Am just saying this is their nature: Selfish, Loathsome, cheat, liar and a thief if they can get away with it.

Backups .. no need for recovery tools!

Be sure you can read your backups. I have a 2.0 TB SATA drive that only wants to work plugged into an external USB stage rack. Installed inside the computer, it claims it can't read it. Another drive from the same manufacturer, same capacity, made less than a week later works just fine inside and out.

For me it isn't so much a backup as a migration to larger drives. The originals become my backups while the new drives get tested.

DO you actually think the N. Korean citizens have computers sitting around waiting to get the internet?

The entire NK economy is socialized which means that almost everything is rationed from the government. Hell, NK just started allowing cell phone in the country and is now contemplating internet access for those cell phones on a limited bases.

NK wouldn't be telling their people anything because the vast majority of them wouldn't have a computer or any internet capable device.

So in case any average consumer reads this, let's put an end to that myth. For instance, I'll compare the Starter Win7 disabled list in TFA with Puppy Linux:

• Aero Glass - well, Puppy has Compiz-Fusion.
• Personalization features - Yes.
• User switching - I couldn't find Puppy specifically, but most Linux can.
• Multi-monitor support - Yes, although spreading windows across more than one screen at once is iffier.
• DVD playback - probably; but might have to install VLC Media Player or something (which you can).
• Windows Media Center - well, not Windows, but definitely media.
• Remote Media Streaming - If Linux can, Puppy can with VLC. You can definitely stream from a Windows machine to Puppy.
• Domain support - Yes, with Puppy 4.1.
• XP Mode - well, no, but installing Wine may give compatibility similar to Windows 7! :P

Well considering this is a slash-ad for Win7, and the last time I read about Win7 and Vista going against WinXP in benchmarks it got its ass kicked, I am really not surprised they didn't run against XP. I especially liked the part where Infoworld said that XP should only win until you go past 8 cores, that after that Vista and Win7 should win. Of course how many of us are likely to have a 16 or 24 core box sitting around anytime soon?

Hell most of the time my Phenom dual core sits around twiddling its thumbs because it has so much more power than what is required for most everyday tasks. What in the hell would most of us even DO with a 16 or 24 core box besides crank up our electric and cooling bills? When I built this new box I finally took the plunge and went to XP X64 and I have to say I am impressed. It has run everything I have thrown at it with the exception of a 7 year old cheapo TV tuner which I found an X64 replacement for a grand total of $34. So while I think Win7 looks purty, I think I'll just sit this one out, thanks. To anyone who hasn't tried it XP X64 is awesome if you mobo supports it. And with all the bells and whistles, along with a real firewall and AV, I'm running a grand total of 438Mb of RAM, leaving the bulk of my 4 and soon to be 8Gb of RAM for the stuff I ACTUALLY want to run, you know, things other than the OS.

Add to that the fact that XP X64 doesn't seem to be pounding the firewall wanting to call home like Vista did, along with running every single game and app I have thrown at it thanks to WOW, and I think I've found a winner. Question to you Win7 users: Does it try to phone home all the damned time like Vista did last time I tried it? Does it support the older games and apps as well as XP?

The benchmarks in your link found that in terms of accessing 10 concurrent instances of a SQL database, running transactions against 10 concurrent instances of an Outlook .pst file simultaneously, and playing 10 .asf files ALL simultaneously, XP achieved more operations per clock cycle than Windows 7.

This is the only benchmark that has found 7 to be slower than XP. It's obviously not what a consumer OS is optimized to run. As we've seen in several other benchmarks, 7 is equivalent to XP for gaming, and faster than it for the vast majority of real world (run a handful of programs, do some photoshop editing, open a web browser, use Office, etc) tasks. Windows 7 has traded away its speed in simultaneously running the 30 absurd tasks in your benchmark, and in return it's faster in doing pretty much everything that a user who isn't using it as a server is going to do.

And you think this is bad.

Well considering this is a slash-ad for Win7, and the last time I read about Win7 and Vista going against WinXP in benchmarks it got its ass kicked, I am really not surprised they didn't run against XP. I especially liked the part where Infoworld said that XP should only win until you go past 8 cores, that after that Vista and Win7 should win. Of course how many of us are likely to have a 16 or 24 core box sitting around anytime soon?

Hell most of the time my Phenom dual core sits around twiddling its thumbs because it has so much more power than what is required for most everyday tasks. What in the hell would most of us even DO with a 16 or 24 core box besides crank up our electric and cooling bills? When I built this new box I finally took the plunge and went to XP X64 and I have to say I am impressed. It has run everything I have thrown at it with the exception of a 7 year old cheapo TV tuner which I found an X64 replacement for a grand total of $34. So while I think Win7 looks purty, I think I'll just sit this one out, thanks. To anyone who hasn't tried it XP X64 is awesome if you mobo supports it. And with all the bells and whistles, along with a real firewall and AV, I'm running a grand total of 438Mb of RAM, leaving the bulk of my 4 and soon to be 8Gb of RAM for the stuff I ACTUALLY want to run, you know, things other than the OS.

Add to that the fact that XP X64 doesn't seem to be pounding the firewall wanting to call home like Vista did, along with running every single game and app I have thrown at it thanks to WOW, and I think I've found a winner. Question to you Win7 users: Does it try to phone home all the damned time like Vista did last time I tried it? Does it support the older games and apps as well as XP?