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I don't think "suddenly" quite sums it right. MS has been making Windows tablets for years but has had to change their strategy. Slowly turning behemoth is more descriptive of MS. They've failed to sell many tablets. In fact in 2010 at CES, Ballmer stood in front an array of tablets and gushed about the year of the tablet. He was right but it would be the iPad that Apple launched a month later and not any Windows ones.

BTW if anybody has an article on these 'small caching SSDs for desktops" I'd sure like to read it. I've heard of small drives being used for servers, where it is basically just being used to bootstrap the OS into RAM, but I haven't seen anything about using small SSDs as caching drives on desktops. hell does Win 7 even properly support something like that, or is it just being used like Readyboost? Like i said if you have a link I'd sure like to read it, I've still got 3 SATA II slots free on my PC, wouldn't mind a cheap speed boost.

Google; still a useful tool.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248828/how_to_set_up_intel_smart_response_ssd_caching_technology.html

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1587/1/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/3

but I had a few free seconds to help ya out there.

-AI

New numbers show hybrid drives, which combine NAND flash with spinning disk, will double in sales from 1 million to 2 million units this year. Unfortunately for Seagate â" the only manufacturer of hybrids â" solid-state drive sales are expected to hit 18 million units this year and 69 million by 2016.

How is this unfortunate for Seagate? Sure, more pure SSDs are being sold than hybrids, but there is more competition in that market, whereas hybrids are a market Seagate completely owns that is expecting 100% year-to-year growth. Seems to me, there is no bad news for Seagate in that.

but... but... Seagate said SSDs are doomed for at least the next decade or two, they can't possibly be wrong, right?

Like I already said, hard drives are doomed. So sorry seagate didn't see it coming.

Unlike some Yahoo...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/256182/yahoo_leaks_private_key_allows_anyone_to_build_yahoosigned_chrome_extensions.html

If you asked Siri what the best smartphone is a month ago it would have told you it was the Nokia Lumina 900 Windows Phone. Just sayin http://www.pcworld.com/article/255508/siri_says_nokia_lumia_900_not_apple_iphone_is_the_best_smartphone_ever.html?tk=rel_news

I think that an Android tablet might be a good way to go: very compact and lightweight, durable (no moving parts such as a hard disk or cooling fan), and very long battery life. Less expensive than a laptop, and you could buy accessories and software with the left-over money: get some sort of keyboard and Android software for word processing and such.

Asus and Google are going to announce a low-cost Android tablet. The rumored specs are: 7" screen, Tegra 3 processor at 1.3 GHz (that's 4 general-purpose cores), probably 1 GB of RAM and probably 8 GB of flash storage. Expected price will be $250 or $200.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/257296/googles_sub250_nexus_7_tablet_coming_late_june_report_says.html

I have a Nook Color that I rooted, and installed "PhireMod 7.2" (a particular build of CyanogenMod 7). I am very pleased with my 7" tablet. It's big enough to be useful and small enough to carry around, and I love the battery life.

steveha

A few notes: 1) This is not the only way she can communicate, simply the cheapest $299 + iPad). The first paragraph of the article says that much. Later on it does mention that the iPad app is the only one the girl took to right away.

The parents tried several much more expensive alternatives (including devices by the plaintiffs), but they were all too heavy or too difficult for an illiterate four-year-old to operate. They're not just going for the cheapest option

I tend to agree that this is a rather poor study, in that it's based on one source of data from developers who may be exhibiting bias by their very act of contributing data to the survey.

That said, the iOS App Store still seems to have more apps than the Android App Market. The most recent numbers I can find seem to indicate that the iOS App Store was around 650K yesterday while the Android Market was at 450K in late February, so the iOS App Store probably still commands a 150-200K lead.

Even so, those numbers are pretty meaningless. I mean, what does it really matter? Once you reach a critical point, you have enough that it's more about the quality of the apps and developers that you attract to your platform, rather than the quantity of apps. Both of those platforms passed that critical point years ago.

This article in PC World claims that it's for high school students too now.

What really bothers me about 451 is how just about everything but the book burning turned out true.

WHY DO YOU THINK IT'S CALLED A KINDLE MOTHERFUCKER?!!![*]

And it (iPad) doesn't run Linux.

Oh really?

I don't see why people continue to think that a device that is physically in hand can have any lasting restrictions whatsoever for the technically inclined. So it is, so shall it always be. That's why complaints that any given device is "locked down" is so laughable.

LaptopVideo2Go.com is a very active web site entirely devoted to making nVidia graphics devices work correctly. nVidia tried to avoid doing anything about defective chips in HP laptops.

When you download AMD's ATI drivers, the web site tries to sell violent video games. The new drivers often have serious bugs.

If there is a competition, which CEO will be voted the worst? nVidia does not seem honest, and AMD seems to be trying to drive itself out of business.

> In order to get the Google blessing and the added apps you have to conform to the requirements and that involves paying a fee so yes, MS and Apple can compete on price with the operating systems in their mobile devices.

So Android is not really Open you mean? The added apps are not FOSS and access is restricted to the Android market which hurts low cost OEMs.

Eg no Android(OpenTM) market on:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/245495/tablet_priced_under_100_with_android_40_surfaces.html

>Your stupid name is on every website I frequent especially hacker news and slashdot and you have only one track. that track is shitting on Google and defending MS. If you are not a paid shill then you must really have a lot of time on your hands and a demented brain.

I like to take a contrarian stand on the general biases on the sites, not my fault :)

Yes, blaming Google for the actions started years ago of a company they literally bought last week is sure to prove your argument.

Microsoft and Apple have pledged to license standards-essential patents on FRAND terms and not to seek injunctions and stays based on them, Google refused to do so to the EU.

Also, did Slashdot run a story about Apple and MS filing antitrust complaint again Motorola?

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/253083/european_commission_opens_antitrust_investigation_of_motorola_mobility.html

I mean, seriously? Starting stuff from the stupid Start screen? Cripple the regular version of Visual Studio to only write apps for this screen?

Visual Studio Express 12 is limited to Metro apps.

Not VS 2012 Pro and higher.Compare Visual Studio 2012 editions

Microsoft encourages the idea that the Start screen is the Windows 8 "home page." From there, a few mouse gestures or a keyboard shortcut will take you almost anywhere you want to go. If you need access to common functions previously available on the old Start menu, you can right-click on the lower left to bring up the Power User list. You can even modify this list, though Microsoft won't officially support or document the method for doing so.

Windows 8 Release Preview Impressions, Windows 8 Tip: Edit the Power User Tasks Menu

According to PCworld, (yaya, whatever) it's the third: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/256370/researchers_identify_stuxnetlike_cyberespionage_malware_called_flame.html

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/256370/researchers_identify_stuxnetlike_cyberespionage_malware_called_flame.html

Ummm. Asking a question here. What does the Patriot Act have to do with anything?

The difference being you'd need to go to court to get a warrant, and I believe there would be a legal opportunity to be notified of this. If Canadian law enforcement accessed your data, you could legally know about it.

The Patriot Act basically says they can demand it, with very little legal support, and it is against the law to tell someone that their data has been accessed from your servers under this request.

So, it comes down to the US having granted themselves access to any and all data from a US owned company or US hosted server ... and made it illegal to disclose that access has happened.

If that data access comes under the guise of secrecy and not going through the normal courts, you'll never know it happened.

As I said, those provisions of the Patriot Act give access that concerns a lot of people ... see here.

So, based on what I've read, and what I've been told by corporate policies ... for anybody who isn't in the US, America and American owned companies are completely untrustworthy since the law reads like it bypasses local laws when it comes to data security and privacy.

Now, for a bit of balance the other way, I see that people are starting to say the Patriot Act isn't so intrusive and this is all blown out of proportion.

But, until I see company and legal policies changing here in Canada, I will continue to treat data being put into a US server as a stupid idea, and I will continue to treat those entities as hostile and not trustworthy.

Since I'm not a lawyer, and I don't have anything to gain by suddenly trusting these entities, if I stick with this, I'm in compliance with company policy. I'll just err on the side of caution -- not trusting the US government is just a bonus at this point.

Probably. The first 3tb was released June 2010. [techdigest.tv] 4tb came out Oct 2011. [storagereview.com] Not exactly amazing growth, over a year for 1tb, at this rate we'll be 9tb in 2016. At this rate we will not see 60tb by 2016, and I say "we" meaning end consumer, maybe some lab monkey will see an areal density equivalent to 60tb, but it won't be available for sale. You're making the flawed assumption that current PRM technology can continue at that pace and that HAMR will not be a disruptive technology resulting in a "bump" in the density. HAMR will be a bump in density just like PRM was only a bump in density over the older recording methods.

You're exactly right: perpendicular recording (PRM) was a bump in recording methods. Before perpendicular recording the largest hard drive was 400gb and perpendicular recording did exactly what slashdot predicted, offer 10x the storage, with 4tb hard drives now available only 7 years after PRM came out in 2005.

But it took 10 full years to reach that 10x prediction, and hard drive capacity has been increasing at the same exponential growth for 30 years. What they're calling for is a huge leap, 15x the storage in 4 years, from 4tb to 60tb, and that's just not going to happen.

I would predict 10-20tb, but I'm not sure anyone will care since we'll all be using multiple terabyte SSDs by 2016 anyway, they're increasing at a much faster growth rate than hard drives and who wants to wait milliseconds to transfer date at mBps when you can wait nanoseconds to transfer at gBps? Hard drives will be almost as useful in 2016 as tape drives are in 2012.

For example take microSD cards, they're at 64gb now. 100 of those would be 55mm by 15mm by 20mm = 16,500 mm3, much smaller than a 3.5" hard drive at 101.6 mm × 25.4 mm × 146 mm = 368,650 mm3, yet a hundred 64gb microSD cards would provide 6.4tb of storage, far more than any hard drive and it could fit in a cellphone and weigh only 50grams (0.1 lbs) compared to the 1.5 lbs a hard drive weighs. Of course at $87 each that would be almost $9,000, but flash memory prices are dropping faster than any other technology related item so I have no doubt that $9k will be ~$200 within a few years.

Too bad that one of America's top companies outsources most of its production. Their profit margins could support USA jobs.

Ipad list price $499

Parts that make up the iPad cost $280 (these costs go mainly to Singapore, Korea, and Japan, although even some parts manufactured there have IP licensing costs going to US companies Qualcomm, Broadcom, TriQuint, and UK company ARM).

Manufacturing (in China) costs $10.

Warranty service costs: $20

Apple (USA) profit: ~$210 per iPad

What the hell is up with this recent flood of anti-google articles and comments on Slashdot? Has Slashdot been hired by Microsoft, Apple and/or Facebook to do smear attack campaign on Google?

Just leave Google alone. They're a great company and don't deserve this bullshit with half-truth stories. They actually care about you. They give you free things. They release open source. They fight for your rights. SO LEAVE GOOGLE ALONE!

Slashdot used to be a better place. We would fight against evils like Bill Gates and Microsoft (a convicted monopolist). We would promote open source. But now.. now you are attacking the very companies that make FOSS great.

go away shill! Google is a convicted unfair competitor, convicted patent infringer, copyright infringer and even paid bloggers (yes they had paid shills working for them!) to promote their web browser!

Microsoft is evil, Apple is evil, Oracle is evil, Facebook is evil and so is Google! The only reason there is a perception that they aren't is that they have the motto 'don't be evil' and morons like you lap that up and just ignore it when Google does wrong.

I wouldn't be so sure. Social networking is based almost entirely on Metcalf's law. The reason Facebook has value is that people use Facebook. But social networks are trend-based. And people hate Facebook. They only use it because their friends use it and vice versa; again, Metcalf's law.

You know the only difference between Facebook on the web today and Microsoft on the desktop in the 90s is that businesses (and sometimes the government) required Windows/Office and familiarity with it. Given adequate ubiquity, there's a large possibility [1] that this [2] could occur [3]... once it becomes de-facto standard, good luck getting rid of it.

[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/240646/spotify_adds_facebook_requirement_angering_users.html
[2] http://www.slashgear.com/facebook-access-becoming-mandatory-part-of-job-college-applications-06217136/
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20027837-501465.html

If if is going to be permanently in one location, than a goofy little partly functional device makes no sense at all.

You are really looking at something more along these lines http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Reviews/Home_Office/G3X2A9D4.

So an all in one computer mounted to say a cabinet door with a slide out and tilt forward keyboard mounted underneath that cabinet, mains powered.

If you can afford to spend more, why stuff about with a dinky little toy. Here's another http://www.pcworld.com/article/185061/windows_7_allinone_pcs_big_touchscreens_for_all_budgets.html. Basically what they are looking at, is what ever is left in the all in one PC with touch screen market, with a 20 inch or bigger screen.

The comments I saw said that the inductive charging is as efficient as a corded.

Besides, if you're providing the option for 120V 'cripple' charge, you're going to be using a standard, if heavy duty, extension cord, not some fancy high speed charge port.

Using that logic, all ISPs would be responsible for the actions of their users.

If they didn't have billions of dollars and in-house legal teams at their disposal, I have no doubt that they would be...

The MAFIAA argued that Limewire owed them more money than the GDP of every country in the world combined. There is no doubt in my mind that they would sue every manufacturer of consumer level networking equipment and even the makers of basic ethernet cables for "facilitating piracy" if they thought they could get away with it and come out even one dollar ahead for their troubles. They shake down grandmothers for fuck's sake, even after death.

Framerates on games are about 50% higher than on Sandy Bridge. I know, hardcore gamers don't care. But now that the bulk of the market is laptops, being able to play most current games acceptably without discrete graphics is a very good thing.

As for the strength of the Australian dollar, that is purely a rubbish argument, because US companies typically price their software in US dollars, and let the exchange rate take care of itself.

They clearly don't. 10 years ago the AUD was worth US$0.50, now it's worth US$1. Software prices in Australia are not 50% less than they were (relative to US prices).

For example Office Professional Edition 2003 was announced at US$499 in 2003 in the US, but at AUD$899 in Australia. The AUD was worth USD$0.65 at the time. So the Australian version was USD$584 and USD$53 of that is GST giving a $32 or 6% premium over the US price which no one complained about since that's reasonable.

Now Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (2 PC/1 user version) is AUD$849 in Australia. It is USD$499.95 in the US. The AUD is currently worth USD$1.05. So the Australian version is USD$891 of which USD$81 is GST giving a USD$310 or 62% premium.

Notice even though the AUD has increased in value by about 60% in that time frame the relative USD/AUD prices have essentially remained unchanged (wooho a $50 reduction in Oz).

Australians wish they priced in USD, since then prices would have fallen by almost half over that time frame.

So how do you explain a 6% premium turning into a 60% premium? What massive changes product liability and taxation systems do you think happen in Australia?

Australia has a GST tax. Just figuring out if you are liable for this will cost you a bundle. Collecting it and dealing with it from Chicago will cost you more in terms of staff time, and hiring work done in Australia.

Oh sure. It's real hard. If you are you selling it in Australia then you add 10% to the price and send that in to the government. If you are selling it outside of Australia then you do nothing. Wow, that's so complicated! All software qualifies for the GST making it even simpler to work out.

How much did HP lose on their touchpad because of the "race to the bottom" for all non-iPad tablets? A billion is still a lot of money.

Dell abanoned their "Streak" Android tablet, and is now concentrating on Windows tablets.

Is the Transformer nice? Sure - but the sales numbers tell a different story - people who look at it still end up buying an iPad instead. If they need a real keypad plus portability, they buy a laptop

Or how about an ad-supported free computer?

Also, note the date on that article. Steve Jobs was way behind on this one.

Look up flashback?

All you had to do was view a site in Safari and even under a regular user account you were 0wned even if you did not click the "upgrade flash now" button. Of course damage was more limited and could be easily removed by deleting and recreating the user account taht way versus running as admin, but still.

Even with the latest patch more mac users are getting infected by the day. The latest varient now runs silently without any interaction from the user at all.

Memory corruption bugs are evil. They can even bypass user security totally and simply run around the check.

Except Apple fixed the Java vulnerability that made Flashback possible, and even went so far as to automatically disable Java if it is idle for more than 35 days. And yet, Flashback still had no way of automatically transferring directly to another machine peer-to-peer, making the rate-of-infection relatively slow.

At it's height it was never as bad as some of the windows viruses have been

Mac Malware Outbreak Is Bigger than 'Conficker'. Remember that OS X only has about 5% of global desktop market, 0.6 million desktops may not sound like much in comparison to Windows, but as a share of the Mac total it is significant: "Mac OS X is the number two desktop OS with 6.54 percent market share. Windows, on the other hand, accounts for 92.48 percent of the market. Based on market share, the Flashback Trojan botnet is equivalent to a Windows botnet of nearly 8.5 million PCs. That makes it an even larger threat than Conficker--just on a much smaller platform."

It's not true. It climbed to 600.000 infections, according to Kaspersky (anti-virus developper) and dropped to 30.000.

They got it wrong; Symantec and Kaspersky both said the number had fallen, but Symantec have admitted they were wrong, and Kaspersky are now "looking into the matter". Flashback botnet not shrinking, huge numbers of Macs still infected:

"We've been talking with them about the discrepancies in our numbers and theirs," said O Murchu in an interview Friday. "We now believe that their analysis is accurate, and that it explains the discrepancies."

"This server communicates with bots but doesn't close a TCP connection," wrote Dr. Web. "As [a] result, bots switch to the stand-by mode and wait for the server's reply and no longer respond to further commands. As a consequence, they do not communicate with other command centers, many of which have been registered by information security specialists [including Kaspersky and Symantec]. "This is the cause of controversial statistics," said Dr. Web.

Also see Antivirus Researchers Confirm: Flashback Still Infects More Than 500,000 Macs.

Wait wait wait, WinRT is completely different from Windows RT. The first is an API (which has nothing to do with "realtime", although they probably have some of that in there to be extra confusing), the second is an operating system that runs on ARM processors and is not a realtime OS. It does implement WinRT though, maybe that's why they named it that. Except Windows 8 implements WinRT too.

The whole thing is so stupidly confusing, there has got to be some motivation behind it, although I can't for the life of me figure out what it would be. It's not like they're going to get people to buy the wrong OS and then spend more to buy the right OS--that's just an invitation to get sued if they try to mislead and double-charge like that. But why? It's bad enough when two things that are completely unrelated are named confusingly, but one thing that implements another? It's insane!

Most of the hardware you describe doesn't exist except for the Yoga which is Intel not ARM. Windows RT is for ARM.

And the news that around 32 touch models will debut this year with Windows 8?

32 touch tablet are expected, but they are not hybrids that I was talking about. Also when the iPad was released, CES 2010 was full of Windows tablets that were going to launch in the same year. Except for the HP Slate, what happened to them?

Intel's Cove Point was shown off by Intel as a prototype not by an OEM.

Currently, no OEMs have made a Cove Point announcement, but we would be surprised if manufacturers ignored the ultrabook-hybrid form factor entirely.

First Cove Point uses an Intel chip not ARM and second, no word on if this will be made by an OEM.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226083/Intel_working_with_10_vendors_on_Windows_8_tablets?taxonomyId=12 [computerworld.com]

Again, I never said anything Windows 8 Tablets not coming out. I said the best use case was a tablet/laptop hybrid. This store only points to Windows 8 Tablets.

I think the reason you think the hardware doesn't exist is that they're keeping it under wraps so that they don't cannibalize existing sales now, which makes sense really.

Existing sales of what? Windows 7 tablets? They are not exactly flying off the shelves. For MS' part, they haven't kept anything under wraps so existing enterprise customers needing to decide on Windows 8 or Windows 7 pretty much have most of the information.

Adding a step to the shutdown process is simple, it's trivial to install, and it's trivial to turn off if you need to reboot.

You don't necessarily control all reboots. Reboots sometimes are a result of application or OS failure, for example the INIT process receives a SIGINT signal. Under certain circumstances system management applications will issue reboot as an automatic response to a problem.

It is extremely unlikely that anyone will install a system in a datacenter that contains explosive devices to turn the system into shrapnel if a network cable is disconnected.

It's neither necessary nor likely that someone stuffs a server with a charge sufficient to turn the server into shrapnel; they only need the disk drive coated with enough material to destroy the drive inside the chassis, and extra shielding around the disk drive cage. If there was a risk of the server becoming shrapnel, this could endanger the server operator, and create unwanted risks, loss, and liability, should it accidentally be engaged.
A mechanism to destroy the hard drives should effect the hard drives but no other system components.

Also, there are self-destroying drives on the market.

You make a witty analogy but do not cite evidence to support it.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/245380/ios_safer_from_malware_than_android_security_firm_says.html

It cannot be denied that despite having been introduced to the marketplace much earlier than Android, iOS is not as frequently exploited when not jailbroken. It also cannot be denied that this is in no small part due to the fact that Apple keeps very tight control over iOS, whereas Android and the apps available for it, are not so regulated.

That said, you need to understand where I'm coming from, because a lot of people have criticized my grandparent post. I'm not saying I *support* closed platforms or even iOS in particular. I have not ever stated, nor do I state now, that I believe the decision to maintain iOS the way Apple has is ethically correct, or even technologically "better" than Android as a whole. What I am merely stating is that a very significant reason for Apple's decision does pertain to device security, and the truth of this is borne out by the evidence, of which there is plenty. Nor do I state that Apple does not have other motives for doing so, or that those other reasons are not detrimental to user freedom or choice.

Consumers are largely free to decide for themselves what they want. As I see it, both Android and iOS are sufficiently mature (and each hold enough market share) that consumers can choose on their merits rather than be forced or misled. I don't see Apple or Google coercing anyone to choose. Different consumers have different reasons to choose the products they do. Just because your valuation is different doesn't mean it is better.

Finally, your criticism, even if it were fully valid, still fails to nullify the argument I furnished, which is that if Sergey Brin were truly sincere about the threats to "internet freedom," I see very few threats greater than malware authors who, by their ability to commandeer devices, invade individual privacy, amass botnets, and commit large-scale fraud, cause everyone else--users, corporations, governments--to go to great lengths to lock down such devices. The user is not "free" because they're always worrying about whether some zero-day exploit is going to steal their banking info or their online passwords. In turn, various corporations and governments exploit this threat as justification for doing what they do, regardless of whether that justification is reasonable. The fact remains that Mr. Brin is selective in his criticism because he is not a neutral party--he never criticizes Google for its own transgressions with respect to violating the very same freedoms he purports to champion, and finds his own rationalizations for why Google behaves the way it does. Just like Apple, and just like any other influential tech company.

NOBODY is clean. I repeat, nobody.

Oh look, its a FOSSie, aka basement troll. How's the koolaid, is it cherry? You want some links on breakage? be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it and that is showing that one of the largest OEMs on the planet can't keep your craptastic OS running without having to do their own fricking fork!

This is why a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? want some more? Nice thing about having the truth on your side instead of religious dogma, i can do this alllll day long! How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses

And how about that "great" Linux security that is supposed to be why we should put up with all this horseshit? Get ready, here they come! Kinda makes that koolaid just a little bitter now, don't it? Now why would anybody care when they could get a Mac or Win 7 and not deal with all this lies and horseshit?

BTW if you'd like a little more food for thought, what OS was 3 of the 4 CAs running that were compromised? take a look and see. Maybe they just had bad configs? Surely someone with knowledge would be safe right? Guess again and its not a fluke by any means.

No, the US government is rightly concerned with the Australian government making spurious claims of security problems that harm legitimate competition for money from Australian companies, and is bringing up the issue with he Australian government, which is its job.

Sorry, but under the US Patriot Act, the US government has granted themselves unlimited, and secret access to any and all data stored on a US server.

I've done some contract work for the Canadian Government, and it is illegal to store certain kinds of information on US based servers because it would potentially violate Canadian law. There are companies who have arms-length subsidiaries whose job it is to handle government data that could not be allowed to be stored in the US. This is no different than similar issues with US owned companies accessing EU data because of the Patriot Act.

The US can claim their companies are being hurt by this, but the fact of the matter is, the US is not a trustworthy place to store your data unless you are also going to accept them potentially spying on your citizens.

This isn't a trade issue. It's a trust issue.

So if America wants to keep their Patriot Act which tries to violate the laws of other countries, their businesses are going to lose out in those markets if it would mean those companies can't comply with local laws and the US law at the same time.

Sorry, but these aren't spurious claims -- they're well established issues which have been covered before.

Case in point is the famous iPhone 4 antenna issue (affectionately termed "antennagate"), where holding the iPhone 4 in a certain way would interfere with the cellular signal. Then-CEO Steve Jobs said, "Hold it differently," and everyone said, "Oh, it's not a design flaw, we are simply not holding it properly."

I'm sorry, WHAT? I stopped reading after that.

Um, that's not what happened. The problem wasn't terrible (I own an iPhone 4), but it did exist. However, the media (especially the tech media), had a field day. When Consumer Reports denied a recommendation over it, it made the news again. When there were lawsuits, it made the news. When there was a case program, it made the news. "Has Apple slipped?" "Will the 'Grip of Death' strangle the iPhone?" Those were the kind of headlines you were likely to see at the time. Of course it turned out it wasn't a big deal, people bought the phone in droves and loved it. The 4S corrected the issue and sold even better.

When Steve Jobs said "You're holding it wrong", most of the tech media latched on that as showing how out of touch Apple was and how they were hostile to customer issues that harmed the RDF.

So what about Microsoft's treatment with Windows Phone 7? Basically every review I've seen has been quite positive. It turns out the Lumia 900 has a bug that can cause it to fail to connect to the cell network. That's much worse than the grip of death. There are articles, but most of them are going with headlines about how customers are getting $100 rebates and the phone is available for free on contract until the patch ships... basically positive spin.

The worst press I've seen over WP7 has been when sites (such as Ars Technica) say they don't really recommend it because it's not clear if the phones will get updates (since the carriers can delay them) and the software ecosystem is still quite small.

Vista didn't turn out well, but Windows 7 seems to have been very positively received. Windows 8 is divisive, but I don't think that's hit outside the tech media, where as Antennagate and the Foxcon stuff certainly has.

If you take out product launch notices (like when Apple releases a new version of the iPhone or iPad and everyone lines up), and stock news (such as when they hit a record), has there been ANY good press about Apple recently? It seems it's almost all bad. "iPad too hot." "Lion made obnoxious changes." "iPad update means old apps take up more space." "Apple hiring slave labor." "iPad builders get disfigurements." "Apple sued by DOJ over antitrust in books."

I would actually say MS has been slipping out of the news. If it wasn't for the Windows 8 preview released earlier, I don't think they would have gotten much coverage at all.

If you'd click his links, you'd see that they're totally accurate, and also widely accepted practices within the industry. Do you know why all the big stars get a piece of the gross income instead of a piece of the net income? Because, on paper, every movie has lost money, regardless.

Once you hear that such films as Rain Man, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Tim Burton Batman "lost money" according to their studios bullshit accounting practices, it's hard to take any of their claims of "lost revenue" due to piracy seriously.

And it's not limited to the MPAA, either. The RIAA argued that Limewire caused them $75 TRILLION in damages. How does anybody credibly believe anything that comes out of these guys mouths?

isn't the point that the car is actually driving.

But that would only be legal in Nevada.

First off, it doesn't cost the big manufacturers $200 to license Windows. It's more like $50 or possibly even less.

Bundled software with budget laptops, outside of the OS, is shovelware, and is often used to reduce the price.

For the hardware, the display is the most expensive component, and it's no wonder that cheap tablets tried to save money on the display. I'll grant you that tables save some money with lower RAM and small flash drives, but it's not hundreds of dollars. Chipsets for standard ports like ethernet are cheap, and only cost a few dollars. I don't know how much they saved on stuff like GPU, but again, it's not hundreds of dollars, especially when you're talking budget laptops in the price range of $400.

No. PC World has a better article with a bit more detail.

"The auto-complete function in Google's search bar fills in crimes when my client's name is entered," ... a false story about him containing allegations apparently spread across various sites, which were then indexed by the search giant

So basically you type "Glenn Beck" and it suggests that you add "murdered girl in 1990" to the search. Except that the guy's actual name and the crimes were, of course, withheld.

Not a word about Flash? That was the big complaint about iPad 1 & 2.

Hacks like iSwifter can be temporary workarounds, but c'mon the entire premium porn industry hangs in the balance.

Didn't you get the memo? Even Adobe has given up on Flash, in favor of HTML 5...

And every CPU fan, and every laptop battery has Apple, and only Apple, to thank for that. Next meme, please!

At least one company in the US, Aim Truancy Solutions (http://www.aimtruancy.com/), is tracking students with school-issued GPS devices.

PC World recently covered an early adoption: http://www.pcworld.com/article/220225/california_school_district_battles_truancy_with_gps.html

Financially, it makes sense for the school districts because they lose so much attendance-based funding on truant students.

Can I place my bet on Microsoft please?

T-Mobile Sidekick Disaster: Danger's Servers Crashed, And They Don't Have A Backup

Microsoft Red-Faced After Massive Sidekick Data Loss

Or just google for Microsoft Sidekick/Danger

From March 1996 to December 2002, CAA recorded 35 aircraft safety-related incidents that were linked to cell phones, the authority said.

The reported interference incidents included interrupted communications due to noise in the flight crew's headphones, according to the study.

Even minor interference such as introducing static noise on flight crew's headsets can be a not-so-good thing during takeoffs and landings when the pilot already has his hands full.

People tend to be skeptical about this because in their normal daily existence, they do not see any problem with cellphones and do not experience interference with their other electronic devices (TV, computer, etc). But they need to keep in mind, an airliner is a different story... it's basically an enclosed metal cage with lots of electronics inside, plus several hundred passengers (all of whom can be carrying RF-emitting devices).

What does it do for the average consumer? Answer: nothing.

What does escaping for the USSR do for the average Soviet citizen? It is not like there was any censorship on the part of the Sovie^H^H^H^H^HApple:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/194387/apple_rejects_pulitzer_prize_winners_app.html

ike cake, that has always been a lie. Along with the embedded fingerprint that is supposedly able to trace a copy back to a specific machine.

No, this is very real in color photocopiers and color laser printers. They tend to place a copy of their serial number at regular intervals on color printouts, in such a faint yellow that it's impossible for the human eye to see. This makes any color printout traceable to the machine that printed it. Commonly in use by law enforcement for tracking things like death threats, ransom notes, etc.

Google for "hidden yellow serial number" and find lots of information from reputable sources. First hit I glanced at just now is from PC World. Good quote from there, Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company's laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the "serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots" in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins. "It's a trail back to you, like a license plate," Crean says.

No tinfoil hat necessary, this one's for real. Last time I looked this up I ran across a technician that works at one of those in R&D telling how every one of their color copiers has a dedicated board inline in the image processing chain whose only job is to "insert" the serial number into the image stream before it goes to the imager.

So what is the energy consumption at the source of the stream when using Apple TV?

Even if the stream is from the cloud, Greenpeace is not so happy with Apple and their dirty cloud data.

Why don't you point that f-word at any companies who write that requirement into their licenses, rather than at me?

The specific example: I worked on a doomed project that was supposed to have DVD playback as one of its features. It turns out that when you sign the legal documents to legally license CSS, you need to agree to do all sorts of things: you must lock up the oh-so-secret CSS documentation (I never saw it myself), only full-time employees may see that oh-so-secret documentation, and... you are required to take steps to prevent reverse-engineering of the dread secret of CSS.

Mind you, one can buy a T-shirt with the dread secret of CSS printed on it. That horse has left the barn, the barn burned down, and condos were built on the site. But I didn't make this stuff up; the above is what I heard about the contractual requirements to implement CSS decryption.

So, because your opinion is so incredibly important to me, I am asking you: Do you have a problem with a company making software that can legally play DVDs? Please feel free to answer on behalf of any customers who might want to buy such software.

If it really riles you up, maybe you should arrange to have the DMCA repealed. If our product could have legally just used the CSS secret without signing any contracts, of course we would have done that.

steveha