Slashdot Mirror

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB410692&cv=820#fbid=X5Yfnrwu8Fd

AT&T has several wireless devices that are WEA capable, including new 4G LTE devices. WEA capable devices will display the following logo on the packaging and in the device instruction manual:

Wireless Emergency Alerts Capable Logo

The following AT&T devices are WEA capable*:

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (SGH-i337)
• Samsung Galaxy SII (SGH-i777)
• Samsung Captivate Glide (SGH-i927)
• Samsung Galaxy Appeal (SGH-i827)
• LG Optimus G Pro (E980)
• BlackBerry 9360, 9810, 9860, 9900
• Motorola Atrix 2 (mb865)
• AT&T Fusion 2 (Huawei U8665)
• Alcatel 510A
• Alcatel 871A

http://www.slashgear.com/google-now-update-brings-emergency-alerts-to-android-4-1-jelly-bean-30244815/

There are three new features to note in this Google Now update: ... Support for emergency messages has been added in this update as well, giving you severe weather warnings and other emergency alerts right on your Now page. This will undoubtedly come in handy for the more turbulent areas of the world, and it could potentially save a few lives, so it’s good to have it along.

Is it Intel or ARM? If it's Intel, it won't run any Android native apps, and if it's Arm it won't run most Windows apps.

That's statement not true. There are x86 android devices , The new Galaxy Tab for a exemple. A friend of mige got he Motorala Razr i with an atom inside: http://www.slashgear.com/motorola-razr-i-official-2ghz-intel-android-smartphone-18248009/ It runs most android apps, some won't run however.

MLB seems rather happy with it and is expanding its use as fast as it can. "Back in September, four MLB teams announced that they would be adding support for Apple’s Passbook in their ticketing system, and it looks like even more on climbing on board before the 2013 MLB season officially gets under way. Furthermore, the MLB says that three more MLB teams will support Passbook later on, but those stadiums are not yet ready to announce it." http://www.slashgear.com/apples-passbook-ticketing-expanding-to-14-mlb-teams-this-year-27271733/ . Appleinsider claims that as much as %12 of all e-tickets are being delivered through passbook but I am not about to quote appleinsider on slashdot or anywhere else for that matter.

Till last week, I had never heard of Kobo. Now there is a story everyday about Kobo.

They've been around for a few years, but since their main revenue driver seems to be their bookstore they don't get as much attention as the more flashy iTunes or Amazon. I've only bought one book from them because I don't like the idea that their content is not in a standard epub format (I don't buy the argument that standard epubs without DRM aren't a valid business model... O'Reilly uses them... JK Rowling's "Pottermore" store uses them...). They've had licensing arrangements to be the bookstore that is tied to some dirt-cheap ebook readers you've never heard of, but they first came to my attention when Target gave them the boot last year in favor of a closer relationship with Barnes and Noble.

Target was carrying two models of their e-ink e-readers (the WiFi and the Touch), and suddenly put them on clearance for 30% off, then 50% off. At that point I didn't have an e-ink e-reader so I figured I'd try it for 50% off.I can only read books on my iPad for so long before the weight and the backlit screen get to me. The "pearl" e-ink screen Kobo was using made all the difference. I was spending less time watching TV and more time reading books. Then they went down to 70% off as Target tried to clear the last units from their supply chain, and I spent an afternoon driving around to different locations buying them up to give to friends and co-workers as gifts. A friend of mine who is over 65 and an avid book reader (but definitely not a gadget guy... he still doesn't even own a cell phone) has been devouring books on the Kobo WiFi I gave him. His employees tell me he's sitting in his car reading it before work, and sitting in his office reading it while he eats lunch. A friend in her 20s who is a physical book "purist" has taken to the one I gave her in a similar fashion, despite the fact that she told me she'd never read e-books. I'm sure they'd get the same enjoyment out of a Kindle (until Amazon remotely deleted their books one day), but it was cheap enough and usable enough that it turned some pretty staunch anti-e-book people into devotees.

Beyond that, their software is open source. The devices run a stripped down Linux distro and there is a community dedicated to rooting and hacking the device... and as far as I can tell they're not fighting it. It was pretty simple to SSH into the device and play around in the shell. A little Googling turns up instructions on how to do it, and videos of people running Python games on the Kobos. This alone should make Kobos a more attractive choice for the Slashdot crowd.

But their offerings weren't really all that different from the Nook and Kindle until Kobo announced earlier this week that it was selling the "limited edition" Kobo Aura with the high-resolution screen. At 256ppi, it's pretty close to the resolution of the current generation "retina screen" iPad, which is listed as 264ppi. Plus the interface looks more usable than the Kobo I'm already spending a few hours a day reading. Totally worth it to me, but YMMV.

Hawking ought to be more concerned about remaining confined to his chair.

Hawking ought to be long dead by now. And he currently speaks at about one word per minute (via a twitch of a muscle on his cheek). Do you really think he doesn't get that? "Concern" doesn't magically reverse a medical condition for which we have no clue how to cure.

But his concern may help save the human race. I think his priorities are in order.

Mac sales are down 20%.

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-says-mac-sales-were-down-20-year-over-year-23266505/

Found it: http://www.slashgear.com/google-picasa-albums-now-redirect-to-google-05272692/

In other news Google Drive is down. Most Chromebooks are rendered useless because of paltry local storage and reliance on the Google Cloud for storing important stuff.

http://www.slashgear.com/google-investigating-google-drive-downtime-18274444/

How can 10% of a server farm go to that? if(notallowed(X,Y)) { etc

How is that notallowed() function written?

boggles my mind. Maybe I am alone and the Ubercoders at FB really can spend 10% of quality CPU time satisfying that func().

H.

Facebook processes more than 500TB of data a day, and has over 100PB in its Hadoop cluster.

Maybe a simple notallowed() function doesn't scale linearly across many PB of data.

You say that but what did Android offer over iOS? It's confusing because it looks different and can behave differently depending on who you get it from. It was incredibly buggy for the longest time, getting updates isn't consistent and it does have more malware.

Of course openness only appeals to a small number of people but these are the people that will talk about it the most and create hype and if Ubuntu create something that provides openness while making it a more consistent and better experience than Android then they'll do well.

Also if they improve security over android that will help. Android does get a lot of people buying their phones but it also has a higher level of customer dissatisfaction. in fact in some results, Windows phone ranks higher than Android.

http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-keeps-smartphone-satisfaction-crown-builds-lead-over-android-06246257/
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/wp7-ahead-of-android-and-right-behind-ios-in-customer-satisfaction-survey/13728

Another poll says that 1/3 of android owners would prefer to have an iphone. So is adroid only as big as it is because it's financially people's only choice? http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/11/14/poll-suggests-third-of-android-owners-really-want-an-iphone/

77% of iphone users say they'd buy another iphone. 20% of Android users say they'd buy another Android phone. http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/23/technology/iphone_4_att/index.htm

So basically all around it looks like there is a lot of dissatifaction amongst Android users and they're not overly keen on having an android phone. Maybe that's why they don't really buy apps or surf the net unlike iphone users.

So let's not pretend Google has perfected the mobile phone and no one should else should try. Again openness does mattter to get in the people who will get all fanboyish about it and promote it and if they can make something that also a superior user experience then they'll do well.

http://www.slashgear.com/jolla-planning-3-5-phone-with-android-app-compatibility-20243313/

but had the keyboard dangling off the screen. They were fairly close to the same size and weight at the end of the day, and the tablets turned out to be quite a bit better for the couch-web.

The 7" models, yes but an eepc 900 had a closely matched screen and keyboard. The keyboard was just smaller.
(and harder to type on)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00191PKJK?in=2&is=l&ref_=aw_d_iv_pc
I have an eepc 900 as well as an 1005ha (10.1" screen). The 1005ha is huge compared to the 900. I can hold the 900 in one hand and type with the other. Not happening with the 1005ha.
http://www.slashgear.com/asus-eee-pc-1005ha-m-1005ha-h-announced-1543954/

Mail Online link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2250548/Nasa-reveals-new-spacesuit--designed-fan-Buzz-Lightyear.html

Slashgear link: http://www.slashgear.com/nasa-testing-on-prototype-z-1-space-suit-is-complete-20261770/

HuffingtonPost U.K. link: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mobileweb/2012/12/21/nasa-new-space-suit-buzz-lightyear-toy-story_n_2343677.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

I think the actual biggest reason for this is people who wanted a tablet already got a different product from Samsung or Motorola or Apple and they're not going to spend all that money again just to switch. MS came into the game WAY too late.

This has got to be one of the most erroneous lines of logic I've heard in awhile. You're essentially arguing that the tablet market is saturated and that the majority of purchases occurring are being made by people who already own a device and are simply upgrading to something newer within the ecosystem in which they're already locked. I.e. We should be seeing flat sales as upgrades occur at a relatively static rate.

Does anyone really expect to see iPad or other tablet sales go down this holiday season from where they were last year? Come on.

The truth of the matter is that tablet sales have been consistently increasing year-over-year for the last few years, starting with the iPad and now moving up even faster due to the Kindle, Galaxy Tab, Nexus tablets, and other lines. At this point, they're starting to eat into lower-end desktop and laptop PC sales, and there seems to be no end in sight, since their numbers continue to just go up and up at a pace that is still gaining speed. The market is nowhere close to being saturated.

The reason the Surface is failing is simply because most people don't want one. Nothing more than that. It may be a marketing issue. It may be a design issue. It may be an engineering issue. It may be an economics issue. But it all boils down to people not wanting them. That's why they're not selling. If the issue were lock-in to existing ecosystems, you'd still see people making the jump as they replaced old hardware, just as we routinely see on the PC side of things (e.g. of the Windows 7 users planning to purchase a new computer soon, over 40% are planning to jump ship for an iPad or Mac instead of upgrading to Windows 8), but as the iPad 2 starts to show its age while getting shown up by yet another newer generation of tablets, and with its owners looking around to see what they want to get next as the holiday season approaches, we're not seeing Surface sales picking up. Instead, we're seeing that the majority of people have never even heard of Windows 8, which runs the Surface, and of those who have, 2/3 don't consider it an upgrade.

To say the least, their problem is not what you think.

A shame. My mother owns a Transformer, my brother owns a Transformer and my wife owns a Nexus 7. They barely ever get put down.

I, personally, haven't bought a tablet because I need and prefer a full laptop. However, my next laptop will have a touchscreen because it seems like a nice compliment.

I'm just waiting for a touchscreen laptop that also has a Thunderbolt port (yes, I know /. hates Thunderbolt, but I have a TB monitor, so deal with it). I'm eyeballing the HP Envy Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook. My current laptop is getting pretty moldy...

Read this article: LG: LTE in the Nexus 4 is an evolutionary leftover.

Quoting:

"The modem contains 4G LTE capabilities but is only effective when combined with other essential hardware parts such as a signal amplifier and filter in order for it to work" the LG spokesperson explained. "It therefore cannot be upgraded to 4G LTE capability through software."

nexus 10 teardown http://www.slashgear.com/nexus-10-gets-complete-teardown-17257489/

My bet is that they came to an agreement because HTC hold some LTE patents that Apple need:

• HTC Patents Challenged by Apple Probably Valid, Judge Say
• Apple faces uphill challenge invalidating HTC LTE patents

I am voting for Bender in my judicial elections. He is equally harsh on all humans. Although I do not know if he can be on the DC Board of Elections and be a judge.

*sigh* Can people not believe outright the attention-whore headlines?

Check this: As confirmed in an SEC filing last year, the shares in Cook’s renumeration package are set to vest at different times. Half of the 1m stock units – valued at $376m back in August 2011 – will vest (i.e. be passed on to Cook) in August 2016, with the remainder coming in August 2021, ten years after he assumed the role of CEO.

What that means is that, because the Apple stock exploded in value, and his compensation is linked to it, if the stock stays the same for the next 10 years, he makes 378 millions, so 37.8 millions per year (well, + 900k in base salary). Factor in inflation, and it'll be less in current dollars. If he does a bad job and the company tanks, his compensation decreases. If Apple (the stock, hopefully linked to the company, as it should be over 10 years) does well, so does he. What's so wrong with that? Don't confuse the accounting with reality; you're _required_ to account for stock options in your SEC filings, it doesn't mean Apple actually paid that much or that Cook made that much in a year.

Now of course you can still argue 38M$ is too much for a CEO, but in that regard, I don't think you should complain about Cook. He manages the largest company ever by market cap that _makes real products_, and earns 25 times less than a hedge fund manager that profited from the recession by moving money around (and yes, I only counted his 1 billion in pure compensation, not the 4 he made because he invested in himself).

I noticed on Fred Wilsons blog today that the FCC endorsed "BoxeeTV" device has been announced - http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/10/boxee-tv.html This was sort of announced recently along with the FCC decision that cable tv providers no longer need to carry unencrypted cable http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/15/3506030/fcc-allows-basic-cable-encryption-protects-consumers-open-access (guess those washington lobbying efforts paid off), One point of note the FCC announcements indicated that cable providers only need to offer this for free for 2 years and then will be allowed to charge for this from then on http://www.slashgear.com/fcc-cuts-boxee-a-little-encryption-slack-but-not-forever-15251887/ , I cant find any information from Boxee about what these costs will be from the cable providers to make BoxeeTV work? I'm also curious about "storage in the cloud" and whether Boxee expects any patent challenges around this? eg would be a shame if an injunction strikes down the cloud portion functionality. http://blog.collins.net.pr/2012/10/boxeetv-announced.html

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-quietly-turns-on-ios-6-iphone-advert-tracking-12251611/

Apparently so. It looks like it's the complete thing.

Obligatory: http://www.slashgear.com/gallery/data_files/9/6/BloodInk.jpg

It's over 7 million Lumia phones alone. And why is this a problem, as long as the sales are growing?

I still have my n900. Gee, what could have been, if they hadn't been such cowards!

As someone still sticking to his N900, I think I'm going to pass on this latest offering.

That said, have you looked at what Jolla, a company of ex-Nokia employees is doing with MeeGo, the successor to the Maemo OS which our N900s runs?

Personally I'm looking forward to what they have to offer.

I still have my n900. Gee, what could have been, if they hadn't been such cowards!

As someone still sticking to his N900, I think I'm going to pass on this latest offering.

That said, have you looked at what Jolla, a company of ex-Nokia employees is doing with MeeGo, the successor to the Maemo OS which our N900s runs?

Personally I'm looking forward to what they have to offer.

I still have my n900. Gee, what could have been, if they hadn't been such cowards!

As someone still sticking to his N900, I think I'm going to pass on this latest offering.

That said, have you looked at what Jolla, a company of ex-Nokia employees is doing with MeeGo, the successor to the Maemo OS which our N900s runs?

Personally I'm looking forward to what they have to offer.

They're also saying that the Jolla phone will be able to run Android applications, and if so that'll be an exciting development:

Thanks, I'd missed that bit of news! That would be a massive boost for them -- probably a necessary one too, given the size of the app ecosystems they're up against. Hmm, think I'll hold off on the Galaxy Nexus purchase for a little while longer...

As a current N900 owner, I'm also very interested in what Jolla will produce, as I'm very much hoping that to be my next phone.

However, as a US citizen the radios they choose to put into the phone may prohibit me from using it, as I'm not keen on switching from TMobile because of my grandfathered data plan.

I'm also concerned about if their phone will have a physical keyboard or not, but it is said that there will be a developer edition, which may be more to my liking.

They're also saying that the Jolla phone will be able to run Android applications, and if so that'll be an exciting development:

Someone should tell these people: http://www.elcomsoft.com/iphone-forensic-toolkit.html

From your linked site:

"Enhanced Forensic Access to iPhone/iPad/iPod Devices running iOS 4"
[...]
Protected file system dumps can be extracted from iPhone devices equipped with on-board hardware encryption and running iOS 4.x. Supported devices include iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (both GSM and CDMA models), first-gen iPad, and latest releases of iPod Touch (3rd and 4th generation).

In other words, they don't support the latest-generation iPhone (4S) or iOS (5), nor the last two generations of iPad. According to Apple, as of June 2012 almost 80% of the 365 million iOS devices sold had been upgraded to iOS5.

Maybe it works unofficially on these, but iOS5 and the iPhone 4S have been out for almost a year now. I imagine the ability to break into these would be a significant product feature they'd want to promote--if they had it.

I have had a 7" sub $100 tablet, no complaints. It worked great until one day I noticed an extra icon on the screen that had never been there before. When it wouldn't let me perform a 'factory reset' I realized it had been 'hard' hacked, and turned into a listening device. That was the end of that tablet, it got smashed into a hundred pieces! I won't have another android tablet until I've learned how to secure it down completely. It's too bad, I really liked having that tablet around, too. Anyways, here's a link to a 11" Samsung tablet that should be out this year, it might have a screen that equals Apple's... http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-is-moments-away-from-a-true-ipad-alternative-11242611/

A group of scientists have put the world on alert that a massive solar flare could happen within the next two years that could harm power grids, communications, and satellites around the world. The scientists say that the risk of a massive flare that could harm systems on the earth increase as the sun reaches the peak of its 10-year activity cycle. The scientists say “governments are taking it very seriously.”

The chance of a massive solar storm is about 12% for every decade. According to the scientists, the last major solar storm was over 150 years ago, and the odds say that a massive solar storm occurs approximately once in every 100 years. The fear is that these massive solar storms could melt transformers within national power grids, destroy or damage satellites, knockout radio communications, and more.

Link.

Seen the new HP Z-1 workstations? The motherboard and hard disk drive are built into a clam-shell monitor design.

I'm not too sure if that is going to take off, especially if the screen goes bust, you now have to send the whole system back, rather than just the monitor. But there isn't going to be any need for big iron in the closet. HP used to make workstations that were more deskstations rather than desktop, as one whole cupboard was essentially the PC chassis.

Isn't BlackBerry just a customised Android nowadays?

Classic BlackBerry OS has had an authentic Java ME stack, not the Dalvik stack. The new BlackBerry OS can run Android applications, but it's no more a customized Android than Ubuntu with Wine is a customized Windows. Look at what doesn't run.

AC didn't mention Bada

Was this under your threshold?

(Lapine has a word for motor vehicle but no general word for machine, especially considering that the numbers go 1, 2, 3, 4, over 9000.)

I have yet to see anything truly innovative come out of Apple,

Well, not if you define "innovation" as actually inventing a completely brand new idea from scratch, and don't give any credit to the hard part - selling it. "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" is an aphorism only exceeded in utter wrongness by "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves".

The story of Apple's life has been "they may not have invented (x) but they were one of the first to turn it into a desirable product and successfully market it..." where X includes the GUI and mouse, local area networking, the laser printer, PostScript - and hence desktop publishing, full motion video on PC (Quicktime was at the cutting edge of this) - and hence nonlinear video editing... some of us were around when these things were taking off and people sure as hell weren't using IBM PCs for them (Amigas and Acorns maybe).

And the original Mac is something of a design classic...

Then you have the modern laptop - with the keyboard set back and a central pointing device in front, as debuted on the first Powerbooks. Maybe not the Manhattan project, but virtually every other laptop since has copied it. Pretty sure that the previous Mac "Portable", though deemed a flop, was the first portable to use an active-matrix (TFT) display.

Using a RISC processor? RISC vs. CISC is almost irrelevant now (since modern CISC processors have assimilated the good bits of RISC design) but it used to be the Next Big Thing and Apple were the second to market with a RISC-based personal computer (Acorn were first by a long margin, but not really significant outside of the UK, although the ARM processor they developed didn't do badly - Apple played a big role in the later development of that, too). Then there's Digital Cameras - again, not the first but one of the first viable consumer products.

Of course, the Newton wasn't innovative at all because some guy at Xerox had sketched one on a beer mat 20 years before (and anyway, Steve Jobs planted the whole Newton thing when he was using a time machine to set up the great iPhone conspiracy).

Then there's USB. Apple certainly didn't invent that, but before the iMac the only use for it was the slightly increased airflow from those two funny square sockets on the back of your PC that Windows 95 didn't really support. There was a reason why most of the first mass-market USB peripherals had translucent blue cases...

So, what have Apple done for us this century? Well, every year in the 80s and 90s was going to be The Year of Unix on the Desktop. Apple finally did it with OS X (yes, there's Linux - which succeeded on servers, embedded devices an Android but has yet to get large scale adoption on the desktop). They managed to fairly seamlessly switch from PPC to Intel using emulation/recompilation (quite an achievement) and popularised Small Form Factor computers. We've had vastly improved trackpads on laptops (seriously - I always had to carry a mouse around until Apple introduced the new multitouch trackpads). Now we have an external PCIe bus (thunderbolt) which may or may not take off, and they've just doubled the linear resolution of their laptop display at a time when everybody else had decided that 1080p was enough.

I won't mention the iPod/iPhone because everybody knows that they were invented by Samsung after being inspired by the "news pad" in the film 2001, and that Apple copied them and then used a time machine to go back and launch the iPhone at a time when Android phones looked like this.

So please suggest some other companies with anything like that track record. Microsoft/IBM? Well, turning the personal computer into a commodity was pretty damned significant (not so sure that it was progress), but apart from that...

Your ancestors must have been strongly related to the Titanic Quartet.

• March 2010 lost $1B in quarter
• July 2011 190M loss, declining PS3 sales
• Feb 2012, Lost 1B, PS3 a primary culprit

That was just a few seconds of Googling, and just the first page of results listing the RED in Sony's PS3 area. The only place Sony appears to be getting a profit at the moment is from their remaining stake in Sony Pictures. Sony, the company we've grown to hate, looks like it's heading to the dump. Good riddance.

http://www.slashgear.com/megaupload-claims-us-military-uploaded-94245-gigabytes-26220037/

[citation provided]

Of course, just because the user had a govt address doesn't really means it was government data.

and go after some actual criminals

Hey, now, threatening the corporate profits of campaign donors is a crime these days.

In general, you can do work or you can answer questions from management, but you can't do both.

Not buying it; we're not talking about some open-source, crowd-funded underdog, here - If you're really trying to convince me that communicating with customers when things go wrong is too much work for a company that has more money than the government, you've got a tough road ahead. It becomes even harder to convince me of such when taking into account Apple's history of deny, deny, deny.

Yawn. Apple commented that it was looking into the problem last night, and has now confirmed that it has been fixed.

Meanwhile: Google denies Android botnet claim, Google denies preventing anti-competition probe, Google denies 'cooking' search results,Samsung denies, and Samsung remains adamant in denying its full responsibility and unwilling to pay due compensation to all the deceased workers..

In general, you can do work or you can answer questions from management, but you can't do both.

Not buying it; we're not talking about some open-source, crowd-funded underdog, here - If you're really trying to convince me that communicating with customers when things go wrong is too much work for a company that has more money than the government, you've got a tough road ahead. It becomes even harder to convince me of such when taking into account Apple's history of deny, deny, deny.

Yawn. Apple commented that it was looking into the problem last night, and has now confirmed that it has been fixed.

Meanwhile: Google denies Android botnet claim, Google denies preventing anti-competition probe, Google denies 'cooking' search results,Samsung denies, and Samsung remains adamant in denying its full responsibility and unwilling to pay due compensation to all the deceased workers..

Google just announced that they will be teaming up with Samsung to fight this patent case. http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-were-working-on-an-apple-attack-with-google-02236690/ Now we've got a fight!

Are you questioning whether you need a tablet or whether to get THIS tablet? Nobody "needs" a tablet but I find I carry my PlayBook around the office a lot and it is a great tool (I have an Android tablet but haven't used it nearly as much). In my case it is made ever more capable because I still rock a BB phone. The two devices combine via the BlackBerry Bridge software on the phone. Once connected your data on your phone can be accessed on the PB including your wireless data whether or not you have a tethering plan (AT&T modifies the Bridge software to prevent this but you can get the unmodified version easily). The hardware can't be beat for this price (3/5 MP cameras/ gyroscope / and a fricken magnometer!). It has the most feature complete browser of any tablet with HTML 5 and Flash 11.2 support so most sites look the same as they would from your PC. And since the PB can run Android apps (and possibly iOS apps in the near future) there are plenty of apps to choose from.

The newly announced Asus Transformer Book is an Ivy Bridge tablet/laptop hybrid that comes in 14" version (also 11.6" and 13") in 1920x1080, 4Gb RAM. Looking at the photos, it definitely does have USB (tho it's on the dock, not on the tablet itself, same as today's Transformer), and micro-HDMI.

That's because it's a much more powerful device, as well. It's bigger, too (it starts at 11", and models go all the way up to 14"). That's a niche of its own.

The one that'll be competing with Android tablets directly is 810, which runs on Medfield - think same price and battery life as ARM, but able to run any existing Windows app, at least as good as a typical Atom netbook. Similar size, too - 10.1", and at 0.87" thick it is thinner than the new iPad.

When I first heard of the Project Glass, I thought they had found a way of doing what some Japanese companies have been doing for a while...rather than displaying the image in *front* of your eye, they actually draw the image line by line directly *in* your eye on your retina with lasers. I still hold out hope that this is the long term goal of Project Glass, but who knows. A bit of reading Here

And Here

And Here

Did these guys have any significant technology? (Just askin, I really don't know. Even the Lightsquared Faq is fairly useless at explaining what they have that hasn't been done before)

And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere, such as, but not limited to some of the bandwidth Verizon is finding un-useful in the 700mhz band that they can't pawn off on anybody.

It seems to me that the only problem they had was a dependence on the wrong block of spectrum. On the other hand, any company that wants to push ahead with a spectrum usage with total disregard for existing spectrum use and the safety concerns of the entire GPS community probably isn't a company you want setting up this type of service in the first place.

Yes. I did a lot of shopping and bought a 17" MBP as well, because I wanted that 1920x1200 display. In the world of "higher end" laptops like this, it was actually quite price-competitive with Thinkpads and Dells. I could have matched the MBP's specs and price (mostly) by going with a 10-pound luggable monster from Alienware, but I'm 35 at this point and I don't need clients laughing at me when I bust out my laptop at a meeting and the glowing alien eyes and HR Giger-lite styling light up.

I've found the latest (early 2011) model pretty decent for gaming! ATI 6750M 1GB isn't too bad at all. Portal 2 ran great even under OSX.

Heat was more of an issue than framerate (the machine never overheated or anything) but even Visual Studio + Resharper makes the fans spin, so the fans are really cranking when I play games.

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

Welcomed Google to the Smart Phone market place? http://www.slashgear.com/apple-releases-full-page-welcome-to-ibm-30-years-ago-yesterday-13171586/#entrycontent