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Actually it is up commercially. See here:

Ericsson and TeliaSonera reveals world's first commercial LTE site in Stockholm

AT&T loses.

AT&T is smoked if Apple allows Verizon or any other LTE carrier to get their hands on the iPhone ahead of AT&T's network rebuild 3 years down the road. AT&T is doing this because Verizon is supposedly getting ready to get iPhones as part of their changeover from CDMA to GSM in 2010 (and thus gain LTE capability) - plus Verizon is *already* testing LTE in a couple of markets.

AT&T's foot dragging with coverage problems, their denial that they need better endpoint bandwidth, etc - its now coming back to bite them in the ass.

AT&T is about a year and a half behind Version in LTE testing for deployment (they are projecting 2011-2012 for LTE at AT&T). So they are stuck with 7.2Mbit HSPA.

Verizon will skip HSPA and go straight to the higher speed LTE in 2010, long before AT&T can get there. And that upgrade comes at about the same time Apple's exclusivity with AT&T dies, what a coincidence. hmmmm.

WHats LTE mean for data rates? Here: 60mbits at less than 100 mW demonstrated December by LG at NTT DOCOMO.

Ericsson already has an operational LTE net in Stockholm that runs 50Mb/s supposedly.

And look at this: 170mbits -- in a moving car!

DO WANT!

AT&T loses.

AT&T is smoked if Apple allows Verizon or any other LTE carrier to get their hands on the iPhone ahead of AT&T's network rebuild 3 years down the road. AT&T is doing this because Verizon is supposedly getting ready to get iPhones as part of their changeover from CDMA to GSM in 2010 (and thus gain LTE capability) - plus Verizon is *already* testing LTE in a couple of markets.

AT&T's foot dragging with coverage problems, their denial that they need better endpoint bandwidth, etc - its now coming back to bite them in the ass.

AT&T is about a year and a half behind Version in LTE testing for deployment (they are projecting 2011-2012 for LTE at AT&T). So they are stuck with 7.2Mbit HSPA.

Verizon will skip HSPA and go straight to the higher speed LTE in 2010, long before AT&T can get there. And that upgrade comes at about the same time Apple's exclusivity with AT&T dies, what a coincidence. hmmmm.

WHats LTE mean for data rates? Here: 60mbits at less than 100 mW demonstrated December by LG at NTT DOCOMO.

Ericsson already has an operational LTE net in Stockholm that runs 50Mb/s supposedly.

And look at this: 170mbits -- in a moving car!

DO WANT!

With specs like that, I'm curious as to what their target demographic is?

Bill Gates' wife. Although I guess they decided not to make it into a phone... yet...

Sony's new walkman has an OLED screen.

I don't know about you, but the wireless syncing and game support was much better than the Ipod's until the touch came out.

*shrug* If you think those are useful, glad you liked them. I have no interest in playing games on my music player, or my phone. :-P

"Geek-cool or cool-people cool? Because, quite frankly, they're very different."

Don't hurt yourself thinking about this question, I realize it's very difficult.

No, seriously. Because the Zune never matched the cool factor of the iPod. Outside of the hardcore MS fanboi, most people showed no interest in it whatsoever.

I mean, clearly this guy thought it was "cool", but again, I don't think that's what most people when they think of "cool". :-P

Cheers

Actually, Microsoft will not, repeat not have the three application limit in Windows 7 Starter Edition.

Microsoft slapped with $1.52 billion payout in MP3 suit

Can he swim underwater like a real seal? .... and if you inflate him with helium, does he fly?

And other than Symbian (which AFAIK doesn't have a phone with a touchscreen)

There is the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Not sure if it's available in the US though.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/02/nokia-5800-xpressmusic-hands-on/

this : http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/19/gps-system-might-begin-to-fail-in-2010-government-accounting-of/ :o)

That removing this device would be illegal.

I don't know of anything similar to this in the United States, but I recall reading about "black boxes" being installed in cars here. Something like this, but it says nothing about it being required.

I'm not sure how the Constitution would apply to something like this being tried here.

Uuuhhh Westlake? Dude that was Vista. With Win 7 you'll be gimped when you buy a Netbook here in the good old US of A. They hope that when you get your shiny new Netbook home and find you can't actually do anything with it, they can "monetize" you by upselling you the next version.

So basically this is a way to charge you $200 for an OS for a $350 Netbook. Instead of giving OEMs a decent price on an actual usable OS they give them Win7 Starter for a little of nothing. Because the margins are so tight in PC retail they will use it a LOT. Then when you get home and find out that "antivirus+antispyware+an actual firewall" equals "no soup for you!" then they are gonna tell you to take out your CC and bend over. The nice thing is I predict this clusterfuck will severely piss off a lot of customers and cause so much bad PR and hassle for MSFT that they actually finally fire that pathetic Ballmer monkey. He has to be the most piss poor CEO since the Pepsi guy that nearly drove Apple into bankruptcy.

But sorry to be the bearer of bad news Westlake, but pretty much anything affordable next year will probably come with "Windows 7 Gimp Edition" installed. It sucks too, because Win7 wasn't a bad OS, but Ballmer is determined to run the company into the ground with his market speak driven BS.

SSD storage, and rotation-free storage in general. It is not living up to expectations or promises, never mind the crystal storage methods mentioned almost a decade ago that got some really nice density.

OCZ Z-Drive, Photofast G-Monster, Fusion-IO ioDriveDuo. Density and performance are doubling every nine months at the same time price is falling by half. What's not to love?

SSD storage, and rotation-free storage in general. It is not living up to expectations or promises, never mind the crystal storage methods mentioned almost a decade ago that got some really nice density.

OCZ Z-Drive, Photofast G-Monster, Fusion-IO ioDriveDuo. Density and performance are doubling every nine months at the same time price is falling by half. What's not to love?

If you're interested in a 'fair' price for the Kindle 2, you might like this link. Apparently the Kindle 2 contains roughly $177 worth of components, of which just shy of $100 covers the screen and the mobile broadband package.

It is not necessarily true that hot hard drives fail, in fact according to google's study over cooled drives fail more often...
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/

here it is from engadget:

"Here's a little story for you: An Apple Store employee had a party in her apartment. A couple weeks later her place was cleared out to the tune of about $5,000 worth of electronics, including her new Mac. Days later, a friend sees that she's online and alerts the Mac's rightful owner. Since she was running Leopard with Back to My Mac, owner-girl logged in remotely and activated Photo Booth via the screen-share function. And what do you know, it turned out that the thieves were some "friends" who were at the party a few weeks back. She took the photos to the cops and -- voila -- busted! The thieves, Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20, both of the Bronx, have been charged with second-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Go go crafty nerdy girl!"

it was not dial-up era though... seems the little hard drive in my brain has some bad sectors already...

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/25/fairuse4wm-strips-windows-media-drm/

And MLB remedied their shittery:

http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2007/11/mlb-alert-on-main-download-page.html

(There are lots of entries about it on that blog, that one is the final 'yay')

There are plenty of situations where people are buying something to listen to, watch or play it immediately, not to keep forever and ever as something precious; DRM isn't such a big deal for those people (but they should certainly factor it into their value calculations...).

Samsung has begun manufacture of their PRAM which promises to be a replacement for NAND:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/05/samsungs-pram-chips-go-into-mass-production-in-june/

Wikipedia writeup on PRAM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_memory

This type of "flash" memory will make much better SSD drives in the near future.

"I am no fan of WGA, but most customers don't care, until something goes wrong."

But that's the point. WGA is one more opportunity for things to go wrong, so it is by definition not in the customer's best interests to have it installed. If you eliminate it you will have a more reliable operating system that won't fail due to spurious WGA errors or the WGA servers going down (as they occasionally have) or being unreachable over the network.

As posted by Trent himself in response to Apple's rejection eMail:

...I'll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and "clean" versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart's standards of decency - because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you'll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any "indecent" material for sale - but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film "Scarface" completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense? You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can't allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says FUCK or CUNT? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck's sake get your app approval scenario together.

Later in the threaded discussion, Trent clarifies his position with this little gem:

Everyone - let me be clear. I love Apple products and as goofy and out-of-touch as their app approval process / policy is, I will still use them because they work 1000X better than the competition. This is not a debate, it's a fact. The iPhone is THE most elegant, modern smartphone at this point in time and it's perfect for what we want to do with the NIN app - except for the ludicrous approval process, and that's what I want to draw attention to.

Android is cool, but nobody has an Android phone. Blackberry is OK but the hardware is inconsistent and WinMo straight-up sucks balls. If Apple doesn't get it together, we will most certainly make it available to the jailbreak community. I didn't invest in this app to see it languish on the sidelines from an idiotic policy while this tour is in full swing.

The nin.com front page currently has a link to download the app for those of you who are interested in it.
Disclaimer: I'm not associated or affiliated with Engadget, the above quoting was simply convenient for posting purposes.

That's not DELL's patent, they just licensed it from Sony, just like Apple did.

You could take the guts out and make some sort of robot brain out of it.

Better: http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/05/the-whiskey-pc/

I've always wanted to do that, but I never have the parts. Maybe I should fly more . . .

You missed the point. Let us put ourselves in MSFT's shoes. We have a product (Vista) that we actually thought was going to sell big. After all, our previous product (WinXP) sold like mad through both the retail and OEM channels, and so we made a whole warehouse full of retail and system builder boxes and pump up the spin. They way we talk about this thing it is the second coming of Win95....

Ooops......we got a problem. Suddenly we got site after site saying Vista should be avoided and is in fact a flop. The OEMs seem to be agreeing with that as they want to sell WinXP and some start even selling Linux boxes. Now we got some sites saying that Win7 won't be much better. And we STILL have retail shelves and warehouses filled with Vista copies that we thought were going to sell like gangbusters AND our numbers are down. What do we do?

Seems pretty obvious to me, you gotta push out those Vista discs before Win7 hits and makes them as worthless as AOL CDs. But how?By doing what they are doing now with the OEMs. By saying ALL copies of Vista sold after X date gets the free upgrade to Win7, you remove the two biggest hurdles to getting folks to buy your product: That they are going to be stuck with an obsolete OS when you come out with Win7 in the fall and the fact that they hate Vista now. Instead by pushing the Win7 upgrade to the OEMs and ONLY the OEMs, you have just made that warehouse and all those retail shelves full of Vista copies even MORE worthless. Does that make ANY sense? It isn't like they only print Vista discs on demand here. Do they think that ANYBODY is going to buy those discs NOW with 7 coming out in the fall causing the Osborne effect to come into play?

This is just one MORE reason why Ballmer should be fired. Instead of moving as many copies of Vista out of those warehouses in preparation for Win7, and getting more users on the new OS driver design to light a fire under the hardware manufacturers, he instead has virtually guaranteed that the boutique builders, the mom & pop shops, the DIY crowd, the gamer box builders, etc will NOT buy a single copy of Vista. Instead they will stick with the less expensive copies of XP to keep from dumping their clients in a dead end OS. At least with XP they will be supported until 2014, whereas with Vista I have no doubt at all it will be swept under the rug like Winme before it.

I myself just got done building 2 more new XP boxes this evening. If I could have given my customers the free Win7 upgrade in the fall they most likely would have gotten the more expensive Vista Home Premium, as this would have given them the longest support path. Instead all the boxes I build between now and Win7 will ONLY come with the lower priced XP. Frankly boneheaded moves like this is why Ballmer is running the corp into the ground. Mark my words, when Win7 comes out they will be some landfill in New Mexico that will be getting a whole buttload of Vista discs. Because without the free upgrade path they are worth as much as ET carts were back in the day, a big fat $0.00.

Reports Say Apple May DESIGN Its Own Chips

The objective likely to be more proprietary enhancements to their product lines that require licensing and royalties from secondary vendors who wish to manufacture and sell peripherals and products to work with Apple products. Its all about building monopolies, U.S. businesses believe competition is a bad thing.

I bet they could do it for less, and on schedule.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/googles-data-center-secrets-revealed/

Marketwatch reports that Microsoft and Verizon are in talks to develop a touch-screen mobile phone that would run on Windows Mobile.

I mean seriously. They got the market clout AND a touch/non-touch version of WinCE on tap. For as bad as eveyone thinks the Zune is, at the very least, it shows THEY CAN DO IT.

Is it THAT hard to slap an iPhone interface to WinCE? God damn, "One Foot in the Grave(tm)", Palm is doing it and its a completely diffrent os than the old Palm. In the same timeframe, we get CE 6.1... Yeeaa! Finaly we can see text messages in a chat log, like most cheaper cell phones been doing for YEARS.

PS - I have been using the WinCE for the last 4 years and I am goingto the Palm Pre when it comes out. The ironic part about it is that I gave up the palm those years ago because their os was going nowhere:P

PSS - Yes, I want the G1 but till its CDMA I am not giving up my 20% off Sprint from work:P

Dropping C... for what exactly? We're not talking application level security. We're talking kernel level. That means talking to the bare metal. Even if you implement a microkernel with userspace modules for everything, and with those modules written in something more robust than C, that last crucial bit of code that is the microkernel itself is probably going to end up being written in C with ASM snippets, simply because at some point you need to explicitly state what the hardware is doing.

There's no reason why the kernel has to be written in an "unsafe" language such as C. It has to be written in a low-level language to be usable, sure, but it is quite possible to design a "safe" low-level language. One example of such project was BitC. Don't mind the Lispish syntax - they've used it because they didn't want to waste time on designing a proper syntax, and parsing it. Aside from syntax, this thing is nothing like Lisp at all.

The sad part of it that the project has stalled now because the main guy behind it was hired by Microsoft to work on the prototype of their own next gen OS, which seems to also be built on the same principles, from what little that we know about it.

These people are idiots anyway. An iPod without the managing capacities of iTunes makes no sense.

So does that mean you consider the US military, with it's "iPod touch as ballistic calculators" projecta bunch of idiots?

Article Quote Is From
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/05/seagate.barracuda.7200.12/

Original Product Site
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=0732f141e7f43110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

Western Digital
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/27/western-digitals-2tb-caviar-green-hard-drive-launches-gets-pre

Last one is 2TB, but 500GB per platter, and also mentions that Samsung has one...

YouTube has been annoying me lately with their unreadable links. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As6758oOuYs doesn't mean much.

At least a link like http://www.youtube.com/Somebody_sticks_it_to_the_man would give me some kind of inkling as to what I'm clicking on.

I'm liking the more current blog notation like:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/usb-3-0-cables-go-on-sale-one-year-early/

Sure makes sense to me.

Sorry it doesn't have anything to do with your comment, just felt like something I would read on /.

You really don't get why they bother? If it became legal to move DVD images around -- even if restricted by CSS licenses, $30K jukeboxes that was introduced as new, high-end consumer "tech" and discussed, here, on /. OVER 4 years ago.

If the content-control mafia doesn't go on the warpath against every possible consumer aid, then consumers might get "convenient" access to the videos they purchase. It has nothing to do with piracy -- since that's done on a massive scale across the world where DVD's are duplicated and sold for a few-bucks -- it has everything with consumer control -- especially control of the lucrative US-consumer market. If they don't keep up the legal pressure to block all technical progress, you'd start seeing low-end, non-Windows (or non-Vista) based jukeboxes selling at Walmart for $200. The content industry didn't invest millions in getting Vista to have all their layers of protection and licensing only to let stupid consumers get devices that actually allow them to DO things with their purchased videos. The only way the content-mafia can continue to make higher and higher profits off of fewer and fewer hits, is by changing the way they do business -- instead of selling DVD's, they really would prefer to sell pay-per-view-per-viewer. That would be their "ideal", though to get there, they have to move very slowly and indirectly. If they bring the consumers to a boil too quickly then the consumers get upset and balk (DIVX), or complain to congress-critters who occasionally threaten to do things when these content-kings try step up their charges for content viewing too quickly.

Just like Kaleidescape got nailed because they were a bunch of engineers and not part of the 'content-mafia', and thought consumers (even though they'd pay dearly for the cutting edge) might enjoy increased convenience. It's very likely, that Real Networks, being a competitor of Microsoft, hasn't been given the green light to develop a sufficiently onerous DRM (their RealDVD product probably isn't restricted to Vista) that's tied in with the OS, and designed to work with content-controlled hardware on the user's PC (the TPM chip being installed in every consumer computer that will be able to hold appropriately blessed, time limited, or location limited, or view-limited licenses that can be easily 'lost', or remotely deactivated over the network connection that's required for these devices to 'verify' your 'license' every time you view content.

Of course knowing what you are watching, where and how many times you watch an old DVD will given them useful marketing and taste information about the consumers who will be monitored.

Allowing a 'rogue' program that just lets consumers 'view' their own video (DVD/BluRay) without all the content-restriction and obfuscation software might allow a user to view a video through a unlicensed or non-approved video playback device. Recently I needed to replace a simple DVD player in my bedroom -- only needed an inexpensive playback device, but the device, of course has up-sampling and high-end digital-output for digital screens (LCD/plasma, virtually all modern viewers) that is only available through the HDMI connector. The instruction book tells you that unless your HDMI monitor is also HDCP-secure, that 'snow' or 'noise' in the output picture is "normal".

If the content-mafia allowed even the smallest bit of 'freedom' in video viewing, it could undo all their plans to shift to a completely controlled digital experience.

Nightmare scenario for them. Customer could buy their video *once*, DVD/BluRay, then load it on their home media center. But that same media center could show the vid

Switching from a GSM phone to a CDMA phone is simple, on the software side it's a matter of changing a few low level AT commands, and on the hardware side it's a matter of swapping out the modem. If Apple chooses to do it, they will.

Furthermore, you've done bad research. Not only did Apple consider making a CDMA phone, Verizon completely rejected them. In essence neither the latter half nor the former half of your post has merit.

It could easily turn around with a new successful operating system by MS

They could however, there are some key things against them. An example would be the cost advantages of linux, with it being good enough for most uses. You may say so what but there are some ARM based computers in the works (see below) that can be sold for $200 dollars at profitable margins (whether they will be is another matter). Keep in mind that netbooks if cheap enough sell with Linux on them, as 2008 showed (with more windows share for higher priced netbooks, for various reasons). Others will follow if ARM based computers succeed.
Apple is also not stagnant, as can be seen here from their patent applications for a 3D GUI, the register and appleinsider also carry more details. How flat would MS party for windows 7 be if jobs announces this interface as the new interface for snow leopard, just as Linux takes a even bigger chunk of their market share.
Skytone
OLPC
Pegatron

It could easily turn around with a new successful operating system by MS

They could however, there are some key things against them. An example would be the cost advantages of linux, with it being good enough for most uses. You may say so what but there are some ARM based computers in the works (see below) that can be sold for $200 dollars at profitable margins (whether they will be is another matter). Keep in mind that netbooks if cheap enough sell with Linux on them, as 2008 showed (with more windows share for higher priced netbooks, for various reasons). Others will follow if ARM based computers succeed.
Apple is also not stagnant, as can be seen here from their patent applications for a 3D GUI, the register and appleinsider also carry more details. How flat would MS party for windows 7 be if jobs announces this interface as the new interface for snow leopard, just as Linux takes a even bigger chunk of their market share.
Skytone
OLPC
Pegatron

It could easily turn around with a new successful operating system by MS

They could however, there are some key things against them. An example would be the cost advantages of linux, with it being good enough for most uses. You may say so what but there are some ARM based computers in the works (see below) that can be sold for $200 dollars at profitable margins (whether they will be is another matter). Keep in mind that netbooks if cheap enough sell with Linux on them, as 2008 showed (with more windows share for higher priced netbooks, for various reasons). Others will follow if ARM based computers succeed.
Apple is also not stagnant, as can be seen here from their patent applications for a 3D GUI, the register and appleinsider also carry more details. How flat would MS party for windows 7 be if jobs announces this interface as the new interface for snow leopard, just as Linux takes a even bigger chunk of their market share.
Skytone
OLPC
Pegatron

We will see if this trend continues, it could get much worse before windows 7 is due. If as planned a number of companies, such as Pegatron release in June as planned.
Just imagine the effect if these cheap netbooks sell in numbers, ARM will be the new hotness as far as business would be concerned. They would be cheap (actually at the $200 price point, with enough margin to make a profit). Companies would be queuing to produce computers with ARM chips running Linux. As it is Microsoft is probably losing money due to marketing payola, with not as much revenue comming in from netbook installs (I have heard of only $5 per machine). Lets just hope these ARM netbooks turn up.

Although not mentioned on the article, I am damn sure that the guys on iSuppli will be thinking something like 'OMG how can they do business with such a high material cost?'. 50% looks tooooooo high to me, and I am damn sure that they are selling it for a loss.

Believe me, iSuppli did many, many, and many work something like this before, and their purpose is to understand how those companies operate.

It's no secret that material cost is only a tiny fraction of the retail price on this kind of high-tech business. Screaming socialism on this kind of article is completely laughable.

Not all Linux software is OSS. If Flash (for example) wasn't available to ARM, I think it would make them less attractive - my wife spends a lot of time watching the BBC iPlayer on our Asus EEE.

This article claims the ARM version of Flash will be out in May. I hope it is. I like our EEE but an 8hour battery life for the price they are talking about would be enough to make me buy one.

but what role do our current beta tests play in the potential outcomes of unreleased titles?

Companies just release their products anyway. Nowdays beta-testers are referred to as "early adopters". Sadly, that extends to the hardware world as well, as this and this (the forum is riddled with those kinds of posts) demonstrate. At least Google are honest about their products being in permanent beta, but their stuff works unlike the others ;)

Disclaimer: I'm familiar with both items because my father purchased one of those laptops only to have it die within 1-2 months. I bought a Peavey Vypyr amp which was riddled with the bugs that you see in the forums, problems which firmware updates did not fix. I took it in to the repair shop three weeks ago and I just found out that the board my amp needs is backordered until mid-May! /rant, thanks for reading.

What Adobe is of course neglecting to say is that they do this solely to get their feet in the TV-market early-on, before open standards like CE-HTML that strive to accomplish similar things get a strong foothold.
Some companies such as Philips are using that alternative language in its latest sets. Others, like Samsung, are using proprietary standards.

I know where my preference lies...

Quad core laptops do exist, Lenovo no less. Up to 8 GB RAM. This thing also comes with 2 hard drives plus an optical drive bay (which you can presumably remove to add another drive). Three of these gives you 3TB without spindles or external drives. Three of these would give you 1.5 TB internally, which isn't too shabby, for much less $$$.

However, will we have something capable of reading it in 20-50 years?
Probably.
But will we have something capable of reading 8 1/2 x 11 paper, which will double as a punch card reader?
Even more likely.

Also, microfilm is made of plastic, which melts, deteriorates and becomes cloudy, and many other ways of becoming unreadable.
Paper, no matter how much it turns yellow, will still be readable if the information on it is holes through the paper.

Here's an even better paper storage method that can hold much more data than punch cards.

I can't get Linux easily:(

I want a decent netbook but can't get the model I want. I don't want an eeePC 1000HA, which is slightly dated, I want the upgraded chipsets in the 1000HE or 1004DN that allow smooth HD playback, but right now both only come with Windows. One nice thing the 1000HA did was if you went with Linux, they upgraded your harddrive from a mechanical 80GB to a 64GB SSD. Not too bad.

As it stands, I would almost have gone with a Windows netbook simply for the hardware I want and be forced to install linux on it. But I decided on the ARM based Always Innovating when it comes out:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/02/touch-book-from-always-innovating-harbors-removable-tablet-netb/ [engadget.com]

It has a really nice 15 hour battery life, which for a true portable is one of the top considerations.

Some more on this issue plus a video here: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/06/openmoko-freerunner-canceled-staff-slashed/

I find a marked difference between cheap supermarket CFLs and say, brand name ones like Phillips etc. Chinese knock-off bulbs usually relabels as a store-brand are the culprits, They have in some cases very short lifetimes, and dubious components. I've had many start to make scary fizzing popping noises, get hot, burn marks then just die.

I also have a power meter that shows some of these bulbs using much more than twice the power they claim to. Interestingly these ones subsequently die.

On the other hand I have good bulbs, 4+ years old, that have had to come with me when I've moved house the last few times, they just won't die.

Now, the less time exposed to danger, up a ladder, changing bulbs must be priceless.

It can't be long before we see the first practical LED bulbs on shelves: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/09/philips-master-led-light-bulb-set-for-us-release-in-july/

Since the source code is available to you, you should be able to show us a sample of the code and tell us which MS patent it embodies. If you can't find it, look in your ass.

Why bother? There are chunks of moonlight code floating in the toilet every time I take a Ballmer.

Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42).

At the risk of sounding like an Amazon shill, Engadget helps those of you looking to get this week's disposable music that's shoved down your gullet on the radio.

They are not without flaw though, even their Barracude by Heart is a confusing $1.29 (must have been an expensive song to produce) and I also rarely find their $0.79 tracks. I think albums on both sites are a standard $10 though, correct? So it's not that big of a difference for people like me that are interested in the artist and the album as a whole when the other 11 tracks aren't phoned in. Sometimes I find shorter albums a few bucks cheaper on Amazon. Haven't cared to check iTunes for that.

Hope the Amazon US site follows suit with that 29 pence action.

Why is it a "crusty POS"? Why the fuck is it than when something FINALLY gets mature, with the majority of major headaches and bugs finally killed, that suddenly there are these guys screaming about something being old and crusty? Not everyone wants to live on the screaming bleeding edge with all the PITA problems that causes. XP is NOT crusty. It is stable. It is mature. It fucking works, which is why folks still want it. They want it for the same reasons why many businesses(including mine) still have Win2K pro boxes. Because it is stable and solid.

And looking at the benchmarks XP SP3 currently whips Vista AND Windows 7 until you hit 16-24 cores. So unless you have a machine with 4 quads running in it why go with the new buggy when you can have solid and stable?

And as for those screaming "get them on Linux"? Oh please. Why don't you just say that everyone in America should just go out and buy MBPs? Because that advice is about as useful. In the 15 years I have been working PC repair I can count the number of times I've had to go CLI on one hand with fingers left over. Have a problem in Linux? The FIRST and likely ONLY advice you will get is "Open up Bash and type..." Which for 99.999% of the population is the same and writing "Take your computer and have someone put Windows on it because you are too stupid to use it LOL Luser!"

Until the Linux community as a whole accepts that the vast majority of users will NEVER use CLI and it is simply a deal breaker then Linux will never grow beyond the little niche that it has. For Linux to be useful to 99.999% of the current Windows using public CLI has to die. period. because typing "Open up Bash and type..." Means you have NO answer that is acceptable to the user. And you watch, I will probably be modded troll for daring to say this. Why? Because there is a very vocal camp in Linux that doesn't WANT Windows users touching their precious Linux. They want it to remain an elite toy of the uber geek. Which is fine and dandy. But don't expect the 99.999% of the Windows using world to bend to your will. They don't WANT CLI, They don't WANT to have to jump through hoops to get the software/hardware they paid good money for to work on your OS, and they have no desire what so ever in learning your arcane Unix commands.

Accept those realities or accept the fact that for 99.999% of the population Linux is simply not an acceptable choice. Your call.