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And there is PostHaven now, launched by a co-founder of Posterous.

How about 380+ camera sensors built into a telescope array giving a 1.8 Gigapixel resolution? Imagine if they could cool this system down to absolute zero, and use it for infra-red sensing:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/28/darpa-builds-a-1-8-gigapixel-camera-that-can-spot-six-inch-targets-from-20000-feet/

According to new figures released from analyst firm IDC, Android shipments reached 136 million units in Q3 2012, which accounts for 75% of the 181.1 million shipments during the quarter. Or, as IDC puts it,

"the Android operating system was found on three out of every four smartphones shipped during the third quarter of 2012". link

It's doing just fine according to some benchmarks.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/06/report-internet-explorer-10-is-the-fastest-browser-on-windows-chrome-19-wins-on-mac/

How about any of these services:

Dollar Rubber Club
Craft Coffee
Birch Box
Hall & Madden

Or visit the link below for a list of on line subscriptions:

Subscription Services

The Finance sector has grown too big for its britches in terms of its share of GDP and no doubt in other respects, and that's half the problem right there. I say reenact Glass-Steagal and deploy your idea-- but targeted mostly at financial institutions. Other types of corporate business could be taxed at a fraction of the rate for financial services, though I would consider adding an exception of some sort for businesses that are identified as engendering natural monopolies such as cable telecom.

The burden/threat to society that TBTF carries will vary from industry to industry, but Finance is special in that it becomes an embodiment of the trust we have in society to operate smoothly and fairly. When they become too big and then fail, all of the trust we have for doing business with just about anyone else evaporates.

Then Jobs died.
Then ios5 wiped out the maps application off your phone.
Then the iphone5 came out which didn't work with any of your existing power cables and docks.
The high end market where you'd get an iphone as it just worked well now had stumbling blocks. It wasn't an obvious choice any more.
Then apple's share price fell.

Microsoft should have been there to take the lead. The android ecosystem just doesn't work well -- too many disparate devices, too much choice. People like uniformity and simplicity. They weren't.

The market, honestly, doesn't seem to care. iPhone 5 sales are at an all time high, and iOS is ahead of Android again inside the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/att-iphone-sales-2013-1
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/24/technology/att-iphone-sales/index.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-iphone-sales-for-q4-2012-2013-1
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apples-hardware-q4-2012-26-9m-iphones-14m-ipads-4-9m-macs-and-5-3m-ipods/

I mean, I know it hasn't been smooth sailing for iOS recently, but let's have some perspective here. In the US, Apple is kicking ass.

My point is, given all that's happened with Apple over the last year, it's competitors should be eating up customers. If they can't at this stage, they've got no hope when apple's back to full strength.

Then Jobs died.
Then ios5 wiped out the maps application off your phone.
Then the iphone5 came out which didn't work with any of your existing power cables and docks.
The high end market where you'd get an iphone as it just worked well now had stumbling blocks. It wasn't an obvious choice any more.
Then apple's share price fell.

Microsoft should have been there to take the lead. The android ecosystem just doesn't work well -- too many disparate devices, too much choice. People like uniformity and simplicity. They weren't.

The market, honestly, doesn't seem to care. iPhone 5 sales are at an all time high, and iOS is ahead of Android again inside the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/att-iphone-sales-2013-1
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/24/technology/att-iphone-sales/index.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-iphone-sales-for-q4-2012-2013-1
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apples-hardware-q4-2012-26-9m-iphones-14m-ipads-4-9m-macs-and-5-3m-ipods/

I mean, I know it hasn't been smooth sailing for iOS recently, but let's have some perspective here. In the US, Apple is kicking ass.

It's just a "lover's spat" till she kicks you out and changes the locks. When you also see she's taken the local mafia enforcer psycho into bed, you better be looking for a new girlfriend. Knowing Microsoft they will be waiting with a cleaver when HP tries to come back in through the window.

Apart from the way Microsoft is entering the hardware market in all the areas where the PC makers could grow (tablets and phones), there are already rumours of Microsoft buying out Dell. This would match other markets that they have come into, e.g. in databases they partly bought out Sybase and then destroyed everyone else who wasn't prepared for total war. Presumably part of the aim is to reduce the apparent value of Dell so that they get it cheap. The others like Acer, HP and Nokia that are trapped with Microsoft are in deep trouble.

I've been running BlueStacks on my laptop for over a year now. And with their port to ARM Windows RT devices should be able to use it as well.

last I checked April comes before August.. and where did you get August?

http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/02/emi-apple-are-announcing-sale-of-non-drm-music/
April 2, 2007: The day DRM died.

Amazon was the first to bag the 4 majors.. in 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_MP3

Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007,[1] in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) from the four major music labels (EMI, Universal, Warner Music, and Sony BMG), as well as many independents.[1][2][3][4] All tracks were originally sold in 256 kilobits-per-second variable bitrate MP3 format without per-customer watermarking or DRM; however, some tracks are now watermarked.[5]

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/03/facebook-voice-messaging/

How on earth will Skype compete with that? You can now attach WAV files to FB! how did we miss this on Slashdot??? I certainly believe that FB deserves the share price to at the very least double now. Skype which is just like those other ancient forms of telecommunications out there that merely rely on direct communication should really be worried right about now.

It just seems that $8bn purchase of Skype was totally and utterly wasted. What they should of done is kept messenger running as is, dump Skype and invest in some R&D to have the same feature as FB.

From another article:

One feature that didn't make it into this release, by the way, is Mozilla's new built-in PDF reader. While the organization has been working on this for a while, it will only make it into the beta release that's expected to arrive on Thursday.

Or using a Sony laptop.

Try again. Swype (notice the spelling) has the world record for speed texting both normal and hands free (used by a handicapped man with a mouth controlled pointer).

http://www.androidcentral.com/quadriplegic-sets-world-record-swype

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/world-record-texting-speed-broken-and-once-again-its-with-swype/

Swiftkey only works well if you say the same thing a lot. If all of your texts are in the form of "what you doin" you'll do well with it (of course new versions of Swype have the same feature). If you're texting anything of substance, it does pretty poorly.

Feel free to show your friends though. Make sure they follow the links as well.

They left December out of Android Jelly Bean's date picker.

"The bottom line is most companies have a strategic plan, and that can be a variety of different things. If you don't understand that I can't help you. (example) http://www.planware.org/strategicsample.htm...but then we have been through this. It even has a section marked Goals."

And Apple has no strategic plan?

"I posted the figures, Googles revenues are up and profits are up then its growing revenues *profitably* "

Not for the last quarter year over year.

"the fact is there is everything from tax breaks; "

They get "tax breaks" because you claim tax breaks on losses....again saying that you paid less taxes because one of your major divisions lost money is not "strategy"

"patents;"

How much are they making from patents? How much have they have stated they plan to make from patents"

"selling off STB business;"

They *recouped* some of the money they have already spent on MMI by selling the STB business. They didn't make money. On top of that, they assumed most of the liability from patent infringement claims by Tivo as part of the deal,''

" as well as using its bring its Nexus Line to Motorola its difficult to calculate...and you are not capable."

They never said that they would turn the Nexus line over to MMI. You really think they will recoup the $6.9 billion net for the cost of MMI (12.9 billion - 3 billion in cash that MMI had - 2.9 billion from selling the STB division) + all of the continued losses from operations and severance packages by selling Nexus devices?

No company makes any serious money from selling Android phones but Apple and Samsung.

"You have *never* mentioned *any* future business plans from Apple; show me them. I don't see it challenging Amazon; Google; Microsoft; Facebook anytime in the near future. In reality I see a cash rich business, with no idea what to do with it."

Apple is in the integrated hardware/software business. Apple no more needs a plan to "challenge" Amazon in the low margin retail business, Google in the (shrinking) search business, or Facebook in the (slightly) profitable social network business than it needs to challenge Exxon selling oil.

You mention as evidence that Apple's strategy is wrong based on stock price. Have you seen the stock price for Facebook since their IPO?

"; Sony is massively profitable...after buying out Ericsson (its compensating for its poor PC sales)."

No it isn't.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/23/sony-mobile-to-lay-off-off-1000-people-as-part-of-restructuring/

"I'm confused where is Google"

Google's phone business MMI is constantly losing money.

"Sony make a profit why is it not there :)."

No it doesn't -- see article above.

" Hell it doesn;t even include companies like Lenovo and ZTE."

Lenovo's *revenue* from cell phone was only 7% of it's total revenue. Overall it's profits is in the low millions. Why would you think they would be vastly profitable?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/260945/lenovos_profit_up_30_percent_mobile_business_unit_continues_to_grow.html

"I'm confused why again are you pointing to a link where Google is growing faster than Apple"

It's easy to be confused when facts don't back up your assertions.....

Apple's net profit grew 60% from 2011. Google's grew by 15%.

Apple's profit growth year over year 2012/2013:

Net profit FY 2011 - 25922
Net profit FY 2012 - 41733

60% growth

Google:

Net profit FY 2011 - 8505
Net profit FY 2012 - 9737

14% growth:

". I'm saying its pursuits of profits are damaging it long term...and that includes profitability,"

Based on what evidence? As you can see above, Apple's pr

"I didn't say that, I said the goal is not to make profit. In fact how about "preserve future profits".

So you didn't say the goal of a company is not to make a profit but you said it is not to make a profit?

And strangely enough, they seem to be growing profitabilty,,,,Are you suggesting that Apple won't see year over year growth in 2013? 2014? 2015?

"Your right growing revenues "unprofitably" is not a recipe for success [its not true]"

So, if they grew revenue by adding MMI and MMI is losing money, what is that if not growing revenue unprofitably?

"The fact that it is affecting third party development support is a simply another sign."

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/12/20/google-play-grows-app-store-king/

" Because right now I see Google investing in their future"

You obviously haven't looked at Apple's long term capital expenditures,,,,

"The Motorola deal cuts their tax bill because Google is vastly profitable :)"

You get "tax breaks" on losses. Losing money to pay less taxes is not a "strategy".

"Since when did selling one million devices a month become a bad thing :"

http://allthingsd.com/20120711/googles-nexus-7-costs-152-to-make-ihs-isuppli-teardown-finds/

And it sells for $199. Of course Asus doesn't make the whole $58 per device, they sell it at a discount to wholesellers.

"The reality is companies make massive profits from Android phones...don't pretend otherwise"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-google-motorola-idUSBRE8930L020121004

"Google Inc raised its estimate of the cost of job cuts at its money-losing Motorola Mobility unit in the third quarter and warned of "significant" additional charges from further restructuring."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578043782276831090.html

"HTC Profit Falls 79% Amid Competition "

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/23/sony-mobile-to-lay-off-off-1000-people-as-part-of-restructuring/

"Today, Android OEM Sony announced that its loss-making mobile handset division Sony Mobile Communications would be laying out 15% of its workforce "

LG's profit is far from massive....
http://bgr.com/2012/10/24/lg-q3-2012-earnings-138-6-million-dollars/

So where are all of these Android manufacturers that are making tons of profits?

Apple accounts for 60% of the profit in the mobile industry.

http://www.intomobile.com/2012/11/14/asymco-apple-and-samsung-account-99-smartphone-profits-q3-htc-and-lg-only-other-profitable-companies/

"You need to make up your mind what you are arguing with Apples store. I have one point, Apples pursuit of Profits over market share is stupid, "

So, if it were stupid, then how does it make 60% of all mobile profit?

"It also means less money from its store."

Facts are your friends.....
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/12/20/google-play-grows-app-store-king/

"Apple does not make an awful lot of money from the computer market."

So which PC company makes more money selling computers than Apple makes selling Macs?

" I notice that the Chromebook is the best selling device on Amazon."

Yes and Amaz

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.

Linus.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/

I like my MacBook Pro. What I don't like is that Apple dropped the 17" MacBook Pro from the line-up. That's what mine is and it's about tyme I get a new one. But unfortunately the biggest MacBook Pro now is only 15". Now why would Apple put a retina display on a 15" laptop but not a 17"? Using as high a resolution as that on a small display is stupid, just how many people can distinguish the details on such a small display?

Falcon

Apparently the MacBook Air is good enough for Linus.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/

There is absolutely nothing in the NYTimes story that points to any new development that justifies the headline.

600,000 systems in the Veteran's Administration are being moved to Office 365 For Government.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Chooses Office 365 for its 600,000 Employees

Google touted its ISO 27001 certification for Google Apps for Business last week, which Office 365 for Government also qualifies for. Just like its predecessor, the Business Productivity Online Suite Federal, Microsoft's new service also supports a plethora of other certifications, including SAS70 Type II, the US Health Insurance Portability, Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the US Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Microsoft also plans to support Criminal Justice Information Security policies soon. The service will soon offer support for IPv6 as well.

The major difference between Microsoft's enterprise solution and this government cloud is that the government data lives on its own segregated infrastructure. Besides this --- and the additional certifications --- Microsoft's government solution includes virtually the same services as the enterprise version, including Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and Office Professional Plus. Given that Microsoft's enterprise solution is also now FISMA certified, this new service is mainly meant for agencies that have requirements beyond this certification.

Microsoft Launches Office 365 For Government

Congratulations on getting a +5 informative moderation on your post for referring to UK tabloid bullshit that was debunked the very same day by Willis' wife on Twitter.

Actually everyone now can be sure and safe, videogames are the culprit: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/the-nra-blames-video-games-for-school-shootings-sigh/ DAMN MORTAL KOMBAT!

Right.. Google is NEVER down

Well, considering that Google was partially down for 18 minutes prompting comments like "Does the Earth stop turning on it's axis when Gmail is down?" (from your link), I think it's pretty safe to say that Google's reliability is excellent. Perfect, no. Perfection doesn't exist. But if you can't get to Google, odds are very good (~99.999%, to be precise) it's a problem on your end.

Right.. Google is NEVER down

The Techcrunch retraction:

"[Update: One fact that may confound this data is that roughly 2 million iPhone 5s went online in China over the say timespan as the study analyzed, and they may have contributed to the increased iOS 6 traffic data. However, those phones aren't likely enough to account for the entire boost in iOS 6 traffic to MoPub-partnered apps.]"

I found some data points at 24 and 48 hours after the initial release of iOS6 and another after a week. First, a broad statement which seems a little like speculation:

"..within the first day, iOS 6 peaked at more than 15 percent of Web traffic to its mobile ad network.."

Then something that seems more like data that isn't going away:

iOS 6 on 25% of iOS Devices 48 Hours After Public Release

And finally:

iOS 6 Adoption At Just Over One Week: 60% For iPhone And 41% For iPad"

"You can pretend Symbian phones are 'feature' phones, they aren't, they're full smartphones"

A smartphone these days means touchscreen , not just the ability to install apps. You've been able to do that on feature phones for at least 10 years.

You are ware that Symbian not only was full touch-screen, but they outsold iPhones 2-1 before Elop's Memo. A quick look http://smartphones.techcrunch.com/d/z/Symbian

Look at that, you found a chart. Good for you.

Statistically, what you say is just nonsense.

You don't seem to understand that chart, the methodology, or statistics in general.

Fun fact: Our little discussion here actually improves Ruby's TIOBE rank. Interesting, isn't it?

Other similar sites show similar results.

No, they don't.

http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&percent=true&l0=java&l1=javascript&l2=-1&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=-1&commit=Update

https://sites.google.com/site/pydatalog/pypl/PyPL-PopularitY-of-Programming-Language

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ruby%20on%20rails

http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-top-10-programming-languages

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/javascript-tops-latest-programming-language-popularity-ranking-from-redmonk/
( http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/09/12/language-rankings-9-12/ )

No one cared about Ruby before RoR -- and now that RoR has fallen out of favor (the fad is over) so will Ruby. Trends appear to show Ruby as flat or in decline.

I know that you really like Ruby. That's fine. But let's not pretend that it's growing in popularity. It doesn't matter if the rumors about Ruby and RoR are true or not -- or that such-and-such criticism is just a myth or whatever else you want to bring up in defense of the language. The fact is that it's in decline and unlikely to ever again enjoy the hype it did years ago. Sometimes, being just the best thing ever in the whole of all history just isn't enough to make something popular.

You seem to have a lot emotionally invested in the language (or other people's perception of the language). Just let it go, kid. In the grand scheme of things, it's not at all important.

On other news sites, I read that Google today announces 18 new features. http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2012/12/google-communities-and-photos.html etc.
And here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/14/google-gives-google-end-of-year-update-adds-low-bandwidth-hangouts-full-size-mobile-photo-backups-better-event-planning-animated-gifs-and-more/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&source=email_rt_mc_body&ifp=0

Just Google it...

But on Slashdot, I read that drivel coming right out of Burston-Marsteller, or some other PR drone.

This is supposed to be a technology forum but somehow, some Slashdot editors perhaps seem to think that this is 'provoking' material, in the good sense of being humorous and driving up the number of comments?

But at what price? At what price, just in terms of credibility, for a beginning?

Could someone answer that?

I think you're missing the point of Android -- it's almost certainly not a profit-making exercise. It'd be a bit difficult to suddenly start charging heaps for it, too, since it's open source and there are some huge development communities actively working on AOSP (the Cyanogenmod group being one, AOKP being another ...)

Rather, the argument goes that Android is a moat protecting Google's search castle. The revenue Google gets from its search advertising far outweighs anything else, and they want to keep their stranglehold of the market with as many different strategies as possible (G+ is another moat in this paradigm).

Google's recent ventures into hardware have been primarily aimed at kickstarting the languishing Android tablet market -- with their most recent Nexus phone, the Nexus 4, they were so unprepared for any popular demand that the thing sold out in 15 minutes around the world.

One thing to remember: It is not actually the case that Apple gets 30% of the money, and the developer gets 70%.

That's right. It's not always 30%. Apple also gets 40% for any Apple accessory not even sold through an Apple store, otherwise it sues the accessory manufacturer/retailer.

There have been student offers where you could buy a Mac and get $100 for store purchases, which means Apple gets nothing and pays $70 to developers.

That's not exactly true. If a student buys a Mac, he probably has paid in upwards of $1,000 to Apple. So you could say that $100 of free store purchases is used as an incentive to entice the student to give that extra $1,000 to Apple.

I always manage to stock up with gift cards purchased with 20% rebate, so for £50 official price software, music or books that I buy, the developers get £35, I paid only £40, so I don't think that Apple keeps 30% of that.

Hopefully, that part is correct. Personally, I thought that the terms and services of Apple's app store were incredibly one-sided, always in favor of Apple. For instance, if a user gets refunded within 90 days, Apple will refund the full amount, but the developer is still on the hook for 30% commission that Apple wants to keep.

So again, I hope that what you're saying is correct. It's just that I am surprised Apple would do something like that, when its own terms and services for developers are generally regarded as even far worse than the ones offered by Amazon (which is already considered pretty bad).

Seriously, if Google really cared about spreading their products as widely as possible they'd be spending cubic dollars on lobbying for copyright and patent reform. But they don't seem really interested in being a leader in doing this.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/22/google-facebook-spent-record-amounts-on-d-c-lobbying-in-q1-2012/

It is by FAR the most powerful tablet on the market, so obviously the battery life will suffer.

Which means that it will run hot. Will it be possible to fry eggs on it ? Because it has the possibility to become the best kitchen tool EVER !

Let's just put more fans in it!

In 6 months, offices and homes will sound like active roadways. But you'll have a literally cool tablet running an operating system that doesn't really bring anything to the table that hasn't already been put there.

It is by FAR the most powerful tablet on the market, so obviously the battery life will suffer.

Which means that it will run hot. Will it be possible to fry eggs on it ? Because it has the possibility to become the best kitchen tool EVER !

After dealing with many problems, I still had an amateur OS with skype, weather, stock quotes and other totally irrelevant crap.

Skype doesn't come pre-installed, so you had to volitionally install it from the store. Moreover, even the pre-installed metro apps can be un-installed with two mouse clicks from the start screen, so if you were left with those you can't have been too worried about them.

Really?

Many "legit" stores do not benefit the artists!

Some sell the artists music without permission and do not reimburse the artists
http://torrentfreak.com/apples-itunes-sued-by-artist-for-pirating-music-110812/
http://forum.tunecore.com/post/Album-on-iTunes-without-permission-5680939

Sometimes the artists get no money because of extraordinary business practices by their music publishers or associations
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091203/1853507190.shtml
and for interest
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120323/18055718229/how-ascap-takes-money-successful-indie-artists-gives-it-to-giant-rock-stars.shtml

Sometimes the artists get no money because their music publishers instruct them not to register with the copyright agency of that country SO THAT the publisher can claim that the seller is not legitimate because the artists get no money.
http://www.transmissionentertainment.com/entry/russian_based_all_of_mp3coms_former_owner_may_see_jail_time_fines_and_a_mor/
http://allofmp3.ru/press/centre.shtml?s=994&d=66219728 : "Even without an agreement between ROMS and the rightsholders, it is our understanding that ROMS, in particular, has sent several letters to the major record labels inviting them to collect their royalties. Those notices have been ignored."
http://techcrunch.com/2007/07/25/former-allofmp3com-owner-faces-jail-time/

Sometimes it's a choice between
1. not paying
2. paying and the artist gets no money
3. paying and the artist gets no money and you support an abusive music industry
4. paying and the artist gets money and you support an abusive music industry

For mass music I opt for 2 where I can because I think it does least harm.
For less popular music I use CD-Baby and other self publishing sites or buy direct from the artist.

Could it be that HTC have started performing badly as a company, so Apple don't consider them worth the lawyer fees any more?

That's certainly what tech crunch implies about HTC. Now that HTC has switched to Windows they can be considered as dead:

This settlement with HTC is essentially a sign that Apple considers it a competitor neutralized, and that’s far from the case with Samsung.

I think that, in the spring once Microsoft's marketing money has disappeared, HTC may start coming out with competitive Android models again and has a decent chance of a revival.

Definitely it's a project worth doing but you've got to put in some work, both legwork and office work to make it work.

You need to go to the regional fiber provider and talk to them about becoming a last mile ISP and what their requirements are to terminate their fiber in your town and likely licensing issues, service contracts and support.

You need to speak to your town hall about permits and applicable laws.

Depending on where the fiber actually is, you need to pick a business unit where the fiber can be terminated and where your fiber can be run from.

In that business unit you're going to need reliable power and UPS backup to create a small datacenter (2 or 3 racks should be plenty) on raised floors for cable runs. (There are companies out there that ship all of this stuff in a single container, meaning that all you have to do is site it and run fiber and power to it)

You'll need to find out how much it will cost to run fiber from your datacenter businesses (who will be the main consumers) and home users. Get maps and start planning. Your regional fiber network provider should be able to put you in touch with the people who put fiber cables down in streets.

You'll need to talk to your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau about likely customers as well as schools and colleges (and the town's own infrastructure like the townhall itself) who will be big consumers of fiber bandwidth and likely to be the baseload of your cashflow. Also likely partners in your state who might like to put their systems in your datacenter to provide services to your town such as VOIP providers, cloud services and storage providers etc. (Speak to them under NDA)

You'll need a business plan, a financial planning showing likely costings and cashflow and a project plan to maximize return by hitting major sources of revenue first.

I would suggest that you go for a low cost base based on opensource software and hardware as much as you can (I hear cheers from Slashdotters!)

Once you've got this done, then find out about likely sources of finance, microloans, angel investors who will need to see the proposed balance sheet and cashflow projections. (You might find that the reason there is only a crappy DSL service in your area is that that is all the demand that there is - economics trumps everything else and the whole idea has to make economic sense)

You will need help. Other people have done this on very limited budgets so use Google and network like crazy. Make contacts with technical people willing to pitch in. You will need to look at project plans created by others and business plans created by others and sources of finance used by others.

This isn't to put you off, but to give you an overview on the size of the mountain you're looking at climbing. Others have started where you are now and made great local companies. But the business must be based on sound economics and a steely concentration on a plan of action.

casual discussions about a potential acquisition/hire agreement

That's a long way from an actual buyout. About half of big deals that are announced as done fall through. If you're not in a conference room at Wilson Sonsini on Page Mill talking to someone who reports to Zuckerberg, its not serious yet.

A pending patent is mentioned. That's not that big a deal. Anybody who's any good in Silicon Valley has a patent or two. I have six, two of which have produced significant revenue. It's unlikely that broad coverage can be achieved on a scheme for packing disk drives into racks. There's much prior art. You probably have a six month advantage over the competition. If that. Evtron doesn't seem to be actually shipping product. Compare what AmpliStore is actually shipping. The number of disk drives per rack is lower, but there are 40 computers in there, too. A storage farm with small ARM-based CPUs might cut the space needed for the compute power, but that's not exactly an original idea.

So take the money if you can get it.

Not sure ISPs and others would be keen in upgrading their infrastructure to make the theoretical speed really available to home users

I wonder how this and this happened then?

Though USA needs to do away with regional monopolies/cartels.

Unions exist in situations where management is negotiating from a place of power and replacement workers are easy to find. They allow the collective workforce to get a better deal than they would individually.

Meanwhile, there is a shortage of capable developers and we have the power in most negotiations. Why do we need a union if we can just demand what we want and get it? In our industry, companies have even been caught uniting against workers.

Unions are a tool and developers are taught to us the right tool for the job. When the situation demands a union, we'll unionize, but there's no point in doing that until there are a ton more capable developers to compete with for jobs.

Samsung is supplying LCD panels to Apple now, but not for much longer. This is going to hurt the quality of Apple's products, because LG can't make Retina displays worth a damn; apparently only Samsung can.

Apparently Estonians vote online too:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/report-america-ranks-behind-estonia-in-internet-freedom-heres-why/

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/08/tech/web/online-voting/index.html

[Canada], Sweden, Latvia and Switzerland are among the countries that have tested Internet voting.

But when it comes to national elections, Estonia is the clear leader.

The tiny Baltic nation (its population of 1.3 million is roughly the size of San Diego) has allowed online voting for all of its citizens since 2007. In this year's election, nearly one in four votes was cast online, according to its elections commission.

Note that they have a national ID card, reasoning that it's better to have *one* government controlled database that they can control and monitor, rather than to have a zillion databases that are unconnected and contain various levels of information.

Interesting analysis. Too bad you're exactly wrong.

> The iPad mini's gross margin is "significantly below" the rest of
> Apple's product line at $329, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said
> on the company's conference call today.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apple-says-the-ipad-minis-gross-margin-is-significantly-lower-than-other-products/

Also, it's $530 for the 64 GB model, not 32.

Do their margins take into account NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) costs or is it just the MSRP less the BOM (Bill of Materials) + assembly cost?

I'm willing to believe that their margin over the BOM cost is lower, but I suspect that their NRE costs that need to be amortized over each device is also significantly lower because they didn't engineer anything new. All they did was miniaturize and existing design.

Once you factor in minimal NRE compared to the iPad3 / iPad4 / iPhone5... and assuming they sell a decent number of units, I would assume that the poster above you is correct that this will be a cash cow for them.

Interesting analysis. Too bad you're exactly wrong.

> The iPad mini's gross margin is "significantly below" the rest of
> Apple's product line at $329, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said
> on the company's conference call today.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apple-says-the-ipad-minis-gross-margin-is-significantly-lower-than-other-products/

Also, it's $530 for the 64 GB model, not 32.

Charging most cell phones for example only requires about 500ma at 5vdc. Even at 10% efficiency it's doable; just inefficient.

Can't you see how crazy you sound? Smartphones are a new constant drain on electricity, and if you dropped the efficiency of the charging transmission line to just 10%, you'd potentially cost the grid GIGAWATTS of capacity.

Here are my thoughts:

Current worldwide sales of Smartphones were 154 million units in 2012. If they continue to grow like last year, in 2013 they will move 220 million units. Let's ignore the already existing installed base of phones, and just assume those are all the Smartphones on earth (374 million).

If you drop efficiency of the charging transfer medium (wire = approx 100%) to 10%, you're wasting 22.5W to provide each Smartphone with 2.5W of usable power. If you assume perhaps 20% (low-ball estimate, for sure) are plugged-in at any time, this gives you:

374 million phones * (0.2) *(22.5W) = 1683 Megawatts of power, when the wired chargers only used 187 Megawatts. That's 1.5 Gigawatts of added capacity just so people can be lazy!

If it was all about openness, then why no micro sd slot

What has openness got to do with a micro sd slot!?

Yet again "open" is overloaded with multiple related meanings that seem identical to most of the people using the term.

In this case, the OP is referring to the idea that without viable removable storage a phone like this has the effect of pushing users towards "the cloud."

All joking aside, it really is the year for Linux. Not the traditional desktop, but with 1.3 million android devices activated PER DAY it really will be the year of Linux.