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I want a souped up Dick Tracy watch... with not just a speaker, but video... like this

no other explanation is necessary. For the old folks here who used to have a landline phone service in the old days, do you remember all those mysterious little "charges" they tacked on your bill? Like $1.05 "User Service fee" and $0.87 "DCF Maintenance fee" or some crap like that? Well even the federal gov't realized they were just plain thieves and sued them, which they settled for a few dozen million dollars. And went right back to doing it again.

Also there was the dial-up modem scam the telcos used to pull... Dvorak's summary

I guess I'm old? I still have a land line since no cellphone I've ever heard sounds anywhere close quality wise.

no other explanation is necessary. For the old folks here who used to have a landline phone service in the old days, do you remember all those mysterious little "charges" they tacked on your bill? Like $1.05 "User Service fee" and $0.87 "DCF Maintenance fee" or some crap like that? Well even the federal gov't realized they were just plain thieves and sued them, which they settled for a few dozen million dollars. And went right back to doing it again.

Also there was the dial-up modem scam the telcos used to pull... Dvorak's summary

So instead of paying to be legal, you tell us to pay to use a service (newsgroups/vpn/seedbox) that can still allow you to be flagged criminal? I though the main goal of piracy was not to pay at all.

That's the problem with the widespread use of loaded terms like "piracy". The original word starts getting a vast number of additional meanings (primarily pejoratives pasted on by news and media conglomerates) with the intent to label others who apply the term correctly as malicious. See "hacker" for another good example.

A "pirate" in the electronic sense is someone who violates copyright law. This is somewhat unfortunate, as I think there should be more distinction between those violating copyright for commercial gain versus those only doing so for personal use.

As to your point about not paying for content, I think this is a widespread mistaken belief. I believe the vast majority of noncommercial copyright violators would be eagerly willing to pay for digital media content that can be used under their own terms and on all of their electronic devices. I certainly know I would be.

Paying for Usenet access and/or a seedbox can run you $20/month or more (depends on provider, block accounts, indexer community support, etc). This is in addition to what most people already pay for cable/satellite TV access (say $80/mo). Add those together and you've got at least $100/mo that people are already willing to spend. If I could get high quality DRM-free TV episodes I would probably be willing to spend even more. Toss in perks such as MKVs that include closed-captioned subtitles and 0% chance of audio/video sync issues and you've got something better than most of what's out there now.

Most "pirates" are willing to pay for content. The problem is that it isn't available by any "legal" means.

I currently don't pay because for now no service can be as good as a bittorrent download

That might change when you get a handful of copyright violation notices from your ISP. Suddenly the alternatives will look a lot better.

the latest and greatest iPhone 5 was clearly the worst offender of the bunch.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410272,00.asp

isher found that the iPhone 5 was in fact particularly vulnerable to lens flare of the sort Kaido and others had described. Interestingly, PCMag's digital camera analyst found that Apple's previous-generation handset, the iPhone 4S, was one of the best at minimizing the reproduction of flare caused by out-of-shot light sources (the Galaxy S III was another phone that handled lens flare well, he found).

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410679,00.asp

But by no means, should you let the facts get in the way of your brand loyalty.

the latest and greatest iPhone 5 was clearly the worst offender of the bunch.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410272,00.asp

isher found that the iPhone 5 was in fact particularly vulnerable to lens flare of the sort Kaido and others had described. Interestingly, PCMag's digital camera analyst found that Apple's previous-generation handset, the iPhone 4S, was one of the best at minimizing the reproduction of flare caused by out-of-shot light sources (the Galaxy S III was another phone that handled lens flare well, he found).

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410679,00.asp

But by no means, should you let the facts get in the way of your brand loyalty.

This PC mag article has a bit more info. Apparently the "unlimited storage" means whatever your phone or PC can hold.

So it looks like what it's doing is syncing files between your devices... or backing up your phone to your PC (if you wanna look at it that way), via the internet and using BT protocol... so you don't have to plug a USB cable from your phone to PC.

Right now I fear webkit will be the next MS, more than MS resurrecting from the dead.

Have you tried browsing the web with Firefox on Android? It feels like Netscape during 2003 all over again where IE 6 is the only browser that worked well or at all. As mobile takes over webkit will be the next IE 6.

That was over 10 years ago.

Lets go to today? Right now webkit is causing problems being this decades IE 6 in terms of mobile browsing and HTML 5 and css 3.

If you own a Windows Phone (I know you do not, but bare with me ..) and go to disney.com or cnn.com will it render correctly? Nope. THey use ---webkit prefixes. HTML5Test.com is part of the problem too as Google is in a pissing match on being the best browser, but what that site doesn't tell you is that these are not implemented the same as W3C drafting process.

In an open web you should be able to use the OS and browser you choose. What if you want to use a FirefoxOS phone? Will these sites still feed ---webkit specific code? THe answer is yes and you will have to click desktop version on it.

Don't you see a problem with that?

Recently, IE 10 is a great browser with good HTML 5 and CSS 3 and standards support. MS had to change as it is not the monster it once was. Google is just as evil and we all know Apple is after watching Samsung leave the US market due to crazy patent lawsuits.

Webkit is too prevalient in my opinion. We need more engines so webmasters wont do anything stupid and vendors do not get greedy and do anything stupid as well. Webkit is bringing flashbacks from IE 5. Remember at one time it was the best browser too and was just starting to convert Netscape users at the time. Chrome is the way point today.

I do not give a shit whether it is opensource. I do give a shit whether it enslaves the web and enforces another decade of stagnationm, where we can't move on to HTML 6 and corps lock a special version of Chrome from this decade to support their apps.

Maybe Android 3.x will be used and corps will downgrade their phones for just that one version 10 years from now if the W3C makes changes that the current webkit does not support. Only Google's way of doing it is different.

IE 5.5 was cutting edge and MS was inventing new standards and it was the best browser back then. THe problems came when w3c decided to recommend the same standards implemented differently. Then IE 6 did things one way, and Firefox rendered them in another.

Open source or not I do not want to see that problem again.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-20/business/35494758_1_new-iphone-earpods-lte-networks
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395035,00.asp
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/ihs-iphone-5-costs-between-207-and-238-to-make-depending-on-storage/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/14/iphone-5-costs-168-to-make/

It's not hard to find..
https://www.google.com/search?q=cost+to+make+iphone

If I can buy cheap as hdmi cables from multiple vendors shipped to my front door for $1.50, it can not cost much more to get an iPhone to my house or to a retailer so please do not think distribution and shipping costs is more than a few $$ per phone.

Agreed.
Now that the major carriers have all agreed to kill phones that are reported stolen (like most European carriers) , the in-country black market value should drop to zero.
There is still the export option for stolen phones.

But to a certain extent the price of the phone sets the black market value as well. And that price is just too high.

And further, I have my doubts about the claim at the bottom of the summary:
  The U.S. phone subsidy model reportedly adds $400+ to the price of an iPhone.

According to Apple's own web page the cost of an unlocked an contract free iphone5 (cheapest model) is $649. ($849 for the one with the big GBs).

So how does the subsidy enter into that equation?

It shouldn't unless Apple is propping up the price to support Carrier subsidy plans.

But why would Apple do that? The carriers make every cent of that subsidy back and never reduce the price of your monthly bill. Apple could sell at 100% markup and still beat carrier pricing. Instead Apple sells at well over 200% markup even when you buy direct with cash up front. No other manufacturer rakes in that much cash.

T-Mobile is ending subsidization of phones. (You can still buy it on time, but its a separate contract that has an end date).

An older one from end of januari 2012

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399098,00.asp

http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/21/motorola-x-phone-x-tablet-rumor-android-smartphone/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413528,00.asp

Thanks to its winning strategy, Samsung is projected to again take the No. 1 spot in the smartphone market this year, after beating out Apple by just one percentage point of market share in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli. This year, Samsung will widen its lead, accounting for 28 percent of global smartphone shipments, compared to Apple's 20 percent. "Samsung made significant gains in both the high end as well as the low-cost market with its Galaxy line of smartphones," IHS iSuppli said. "This diversified market approach has allowed Samsung to address a larger target audience for its phones than Apple's limited premium iPhone line." http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413347,00.asp

from the PCMag link above: "Among the considerations, "the Court further found that though there was some evidence of loss of market share, Apple had not established that Samsung's infringement of Apple's design patents caused that loss," Judge Koh said. On the damages front, Apple argued that $1.05 billion alone was not enough, but Judge Koh was not convinced. "Apple's licensing activity makes clear that these patents and trade dresses are not priceless, and there is no suggestion that Samsung will be unable to pay the monetary judgment against it," she wrote. "Accordingly, the Court finds that this factor favors Samsung." http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413334,00.asp

Here you go, grouchy can't google it myself AC's... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413334,00.asp

Actually there was a bit of a fire sale on the Kin.

The Kin ONE went from $50 to $30 after a month. The Kin TWO went from $100 to $50 at the same time. The devices where then discontinued shortly after.

Verizon then sent the remaining unsold units back to Microsoft. After a year, that same inventory of unsold devices emerged with a firmware update that turned them into feature phones, named the Kin ONEm and the Kin TWOm.

Actually there was a bit of a fire sale on the Kin.

The Kin ONE went from $50 to $30 after a month. The Kin TWO went from $100 to $50 at the same time. The devices where then discontinued shortly after.

Verizon then sent the remaining unsold units back to Microsoft. After a year, that same inventory of unsold devices emerged with a firmware update that turned them into feature phones, named the Kin ONEm and the Kin TWOm.

Both of these reviews seem to like the Surface slightly better than the Asus Vivo when considering a light and compact tablet:

http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/asus-vivo-tab-rt/4505-3126_7-35477938.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411428,00.asp

Patches are failure you know. They have unwanted side effects that break production systems. The best thing you can get is a system so thoroughly attacked that it no longer has new vulnerabilities against it that are viable. Then don't upgrade.

While this theory has some merit, in the context of Windows 2000 it is not applicable. There is at least one known vulnerability in Windows 2000 that was not patched: http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/top-threat/284393-microsoft-not-patching-tcp-ip-vulnerabilities-on-windows-2000-and-xp and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/MS09-048#section3

This is not surprising to me, and why I've always said the MSE is only for geeks that aren't going anywhere dodgy and thus at little risk to start with. For normal folks there is Avast Free and Comodo Internet Security. Avast is good, but a little chatty but some people like chatty, and Comodo is good and pretty customizable but has a bit of a learning curve since it has sandboxing but if you stick with the defaults other than the occasional sanbox question it works good without getting in your way.

But I have taken machines I've got to wipe and refurb anyway at the shop and thrown different AVs on them and went to the kinds of sites I've seen the most bugs from, usually the "look at teh tittez" dodgy clip porn sites like redtube and the usual toplists and MSE was the ONLY one that never stopped a page loading, even ones that were obviously filled with malware, the rest would at least block most and keep the embedded malware scripts from running but not MSE, MSE seems to be more of a "scan a downloaded file" kind of protection rather than any good for dealing with modern nasties.

Oh and for those that need to clean up an infected box? May I suggest Comodo Cleaning Essentials as its a great tool to have to clean up an already nasty PC. You can run it from a flash or CD, no need to install, and its damned good at getting the nasties out. as you can see it got 4 and a half stars and is free, so if you have to clean up any infected machines its best to have both the 32bit and 64bit on a keyring ready to go.

Try and provide falsification conditions for your statement. What would it take for you to feel that Google genuinely isn't evil?

Are fraud and deception proof enough that they are?

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/August/11-dag-1078.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240004575084851798366446.html

http://www.zdnet.com/google-fined-for-obstructing-us-street-view-probe-4010025882/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402531,00.asp

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/03/google.shtm

Really?

areyou sure?

not just anyone who dares to use an apple anywhere?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410327,00.asp

I completely bungled this link because I googled the wrong magazine. This is the correct link, from /. recently. Sorry about that.

The link appears to bring up a paywall for me, either that or a bunch of ad-laden crap that privoxy flushes.

Here's a better link

there's no "magical feat".. the enclosure is 45" deep:
http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/303516-demo-fall-2012-infrastructure-products

All he supposedly came up with is an "innovative" way to cool it... which will be copied (in an ever-so-slightly different way to avoid the patent) in 5 4 3 2 1...

... Network Admins who have no clue. Like when just 4 years ago, Pakistan took down Youtube...
http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/dns/285152-pakistan-takes-youtube-down

Clearly this should be on the agenda for the new "Cyber Reserves" of the department of Homeland Security. If Google can be taken down by accident in parts of the world, then it certainly can be taken down on purpose. Route filters are your friends!

CYBER RESERVES: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/department-of-homeland-security-recruiting-for-cyber-reserve-1109906

It is 120 3.5" drives.. but..

the enclosure is 45" deep.

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/303516-demo-fall-2012-infrastructure-products

I'm sure you won't have a hard time figuring it out now.

So it sounds like *right now*, the weight is the only benefit for you, right?

I presume you don't have the keyboard dock?

Asus Vivo Tab RT is 1.2 pounds (2.3 pounds with keyboard dock)(*), the newest iPad is 1.44 pounds for WiFi(**).

(*) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411428,00.asp
(**) http://store.apple.com/us/buy/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad#tech-specs

Windows 7 is a mature, well tested operating system. Windows 8 has just been born, and is not ready to confront the world as an independent adult. Underscoring this immaturity is a desire to dress in Children's Clothing.

PCWorlds 13 Surface RT Alternatives http://www.pcworld.com/article/2012091/13-new-windows-machines-that-arent-surface-rt.html

DailyTech's "Microsoft Surface Review RoundUp" http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Surface+Review+RoundUp/article29019.htm

a) it is fast even on old hardware, No it isn't. If you upgrade XP it runs slow. Slow Hardware runs slow.

Yes it is. Although it doesn't beat XP on all metrics, it sure is fast enough, and significantly faster on some important aspects like startup/shutdown and javascript execution to name a couple.

I work in a programming department for a large company... when people have problems with IE, we ask them to use a different browser - we don't officially support IE in any way. Our supervisors and managers already realized how much time and money we wasted trying to.

Really? I find that horribly unprofessional. It's time to stop blaming Internet Explorer (not my blog but relevant). The only two valid reasons not to support IE9/10 are laziness or incompetence.

Not really, it is more like an extension cord for the HDMI standard.

Oh wait, you are probably right. Maybe file for another patent with the terms "on a phone" to ensure you have the market locked up.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410931,00.asp

He's still good for entertainment some days. And he's got this one nailed: "Cyber War? Bring It On! : The so-called imminent threat of cyber-attack by U.S. enemies is another in a long line of fear-mongering propaganda lines."

As I said before, people who don't want to be exposed to APK malware can just leave Android Debug Bridge and Unknown sources turned off.

Or were you referring to malware distributed through Google Play Store? Google has pulled malware as it was discovered, as has Apple with the secret tethering apps and the "Find and Call" app that sent one's contacts to a spammer's server without first displaying a privacy policy. And like Apple, Google has tools to discover much malware automatically. Does Apple's App Store even display the parts of the device that an app will have access to?

It's not just you. I'm a little disappointed I haven't seen the uncensored images in the comments here yet.

Here you go Maybe TFA had images that were blocked by my browser. Either way, the photos are now far more visible than they were originally.

Mod parent up!

No one sees the danger to this. PCMag does see an anology to webkit and IE 6. W3C is coming out with an HTML 5 spec that is not the same as WHatG. I agree with the W3C approach of splitting up HTML 5 into 5 and 5.1 and same with CSS 3 and 3.1 but still it is a problem. WIth pressure from sites like www.html5test.com that test cutting edge features you have browsers using proprietary implementations and then bashing the others for being behind the times even though half that shit is not even in the W3C spec!

I can imagine with mobile units taken over that webkit will be the next trident as websites in 10 years will be targeted just for that and than have scripts for legacy w3c like in the dark days. Worse the APIs will be IOS or Android only.

I was wondering the same thing all yesterday when this popped up on the wire. In fact, I had a similar concern back a few years ago on the ATT-T-Mobile linkup. After all, although ATT and T-Mobile both use GSM, they use different frequencies to do so. T-Mobile phones will work on an ATT network and vice-versa for regular calls, texts, and slow data -- but not at 3G speeds. (For the record, that is now changing: T-Mobile is now doing some 3G on the 1900MHz band that is compatible with most phones, namely the iPhone. It used to do 3G on 1700MHz, which only phones sold by T-Mobile are configured to use. But that was not happening at the time. See this article).

Moving on: PC Mag reported on a presentation the two companies released indicating that the MetroPCS CDMA network will be largely turned-off and dismantled with all customers transitioned by 2015. The brief seems to claim that customers replace MetroPCS devices so quickly as it is, there won't be a difficult public relations situation:

This means that all existing MetroPCS users will need to get new phones by then, but that's likely to happen anyway, the companies noted. "Rapid handset turnover (60-65 percent per year) facilitates MetroPCS customer migration," the slides said. "MetroPCS customers [are] anticipated to be completely migrated by 2H 2015."

From what I have read about MetroPCS, most of its customers use cheap feature phones. The idea then is that they'll tire or break their cheap phones and T-Metro will be able to take advantage of that trend to shift them over to equally cheap GSM phones to run on the legacy T-Mobile network. There are certainly a share of customers that use more expensive phones that they expected when they purchased them to be more durable and last longer than 2015 -- I would suggest that that number is small given the focus of MetroPCS on those that want what is now considered to be bare minimum for cell phone service. (talk/text/30MB BREW/WAP web).

All of this said, I will note that when AT&T/Cingular acquired Alltel, Alltel also used CDMA. I don't know how AT&T was able to make that acquisition work, but they did manage to do so -- T-Metro looks to be pursuing this transaction with a page out of that playbook.

Yes it does

It did... see?, so does the Samsung Galaxy SIII, so does the HTC One S...

Lens flare is a fact of life when you put a strong light source in the corner of an image, and don't have a lens hood.

It did... see?, so does the Samsung Galaxy SIII, so does the HTC One S...

Lens flare is a fact of life when you put a strong light source in the corner of an image, and don't have a lens hood.

It did... see?, so does the Samsung Galaxy SIII, so does the HTC One S...

Lens flare is a fact of life when you put a strong light source in the corner of an image, and don't have a lens hood.

So, Apple should have just put a lens cap on it instead of a purple color adding cap? Nobody wants "high-end digital-camera-quality (whatever this means what is digital camera quality?) images" with it. They just want accurate photos without the addition of a purple flare. I don't get your statement. Hey, there's a purple flare on light sources. Should have bought a digital camera if you wanted high-quality photos. Are we talking about the same problem here?

You say "just" "accurate photos" and "without purple flare" like these are easy things to achieve? You realise that many DSLR lenses suffer from chromatic aberration and lens flares too? This isn't because they suck (though some do more than others)... It's because optics is an inherently difficult thing to do well, and optics in a teeny tiny space is an impossible thing to do well. People keep saying "so why doesn't this happen with other phone cameras"... the answer... it does! here are a few examples

So, Apple should have just put a lens cap on it instead of a purple color adding cap? Nobody wants "high-end digital-camera-quality (whatever this means what is digital camera quality?) images" with it. They just want accurate photos without the addition of a purple flare. I don't get your statement. Hey, there's a purple flare on light sources. Should have bought a digital camera if you wanted high-quality photos. Are we talking about the same problem here?

You say "just" "accurate photos" and "without purple flare" like these are easy things to achieve? You realise that many DSLR lenses suffer from chromatic aberration and lens flares too? This isn't because they suck (though some do more than others)... It's because optics is an inherently difficult thing to do well, and optics in a teeny tiny space is an impossible thing to do well. People keep saying "so why doesn't this happen with other phone cameras"... the answer... it does! here are a few examples

> I'm just waiting for netbooks to die. I've used netbooks on and off for 20 years.
> They just wern't called that until recently, but last year's laptop was a netbook.

There is a legitimate market for netbooks. Not everybody needs one as a desktop replacement or as a gaming machine; then again, not everybody needs a Mercedes. I went on a trip recently, and brought along a 3-year-old 11" netbook http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347366,00.asp I used it for two things...
1) cursory check of my email every day
2) offloading pics from my camera's card onto disc (250 gig drive), and a backup copy onto a 16 gig USB key.

A lightweight $300 netbook is perfectly sufficient for my needs in this situation. It's maxed out at 2 gigs ram, and is 32-bit-only. The Vista Home that came with it absolutely crawled. I run optimized Gentoo linux with ICEWM (no KDE or GNOME), and it's half-decent. A reverse-engineered opensource Poulsbo video driver for linux has been available in the main kernel since January, 2012, so I can get the full 1366x768 resolution. It'll keep up with Youtube 720p videos in "large-player" mode, but stutters in fullscreen. As for 1080... fuggedaboutit.

For regular computing, I have a desktop machine with a 24 inch monitor.

Some links: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410451,00.asp http://m.cnet.com/news/woz-i-wish-itunes-could-run-on-my-android-devices/57524293 http://m.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/woz-sees-little-difference-between-iphone-android-6225572

That review is from a 2009 model. The newer model comes with an 8 cell battery.

Intel is behind ARM when it comes to mobile devices but I haven't heard them spread any FUD about Win 8 yet. In fact, only last year, Intel was telling everyone that Win 8 on ARM would not be backwards compatible with Win x86/x86-64. MS all but called Intel a liar. Then six months later MS confirmed what Intel previously stated.

Guess what, you're exactly right.

Shankar told Security Watch that he'd disclosed the vulnerability to manufacturers and carriers in June, and a patch for the firmware was quickly released. But to date, only Google and certain European carriers have sent an over-the-air update to device owners. Hardware manufacturers, including Samsung, have applied the update to their phones as well. So if you buy an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S III from a Samsung store today, you're safe.

"I decided to go public because everyone has the patch now, they've just been sitting on it for months," Shankar said. "It's the duty of carriers to make sure everyone's devices are safe."