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With storage stupid cheap, and computers continuing to increase in power, I just never saw the advantage to cloud storage

Looks like even the one benefit (offsite storage) isn't necessarily a benefit either. All Sidekick owners say "Thanks Microsoft and T-Mobile!!"

For the purposes of this discussion, Google Voice is not VOIP. It uses regular cellular minutes, not your data connection.

Google voice isn't VOIP. It uses your minutes just like any other call.

"... if you had clicked the second link in the article."

That's confusing. I quoted from the second link in the summary. The second link in the article, NSW starts school netbook rollout includes nothing about hackability.

Your excellent argument: However, that second link in the article does support your excellent argument about Slashdot supporting Microsoft advertising: 'According to Gillard, the netbooks came with "$5,500 of the latest Microsoft and Adobe software".'

Someone should send a letter to the Sourceforge, Inc. CEO, Scott Kauffman" and ask if Slashdot editors or anyone else at Sourceforge is allowed to accept money to run articles that are in fact advertisements.

Note that Mr. Kauffman is an advertising executive. That's helpful to my understanding, because, of all the technically-oriented companies with which I have had awareness over a period of decades, Sourceforge seems to me to be the most technically clueless. Everything Sourceforge does seems to me to be slightly below mediocre technically.

Sourceforge CEO Kauffman is said to have been involved with numerous companies, for example, PopTok This article is interesting: It's Alive!: PopTok Combines Emoticons With Movie Quotes. PopTok is an "Israeli company". Perhaps Mr. Kauffman's connections with Israel explain the fact that Slashdot has run several stories about Israeli startups that seem to be more schemes to get investor money than startups with real technical futures.

The Wikipedia article says, "Kauffman then spent time in turn with eCoverage, a direct-to-consumer online insurance company, Coremetrics, and (as President and CEO) MusicNow, an online music service partnered with FullAudio. In 2005, he ran the San Francisco-based digital-magazine service provider Zinio."

What is wonderful is that a government is realizing that making sure that students have laptops is an investment in the future of the country, and that everyone having the same system makes teaching easier.

How long until YouTube simply doesn't support IE6?

Soon.

http://androidcommunity.com/android-apps-cost-as-much-as-iphone-apps-or-more-20090807/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/31/top-developer-reveals-android-markets-meager-sales/

These links are just the tip of the iceberg. Google isn't hard to use. The question is, do you want to know the truth? If you do, its actually fairly trivial to piece the facts together with just about any search engine and web browser.

Beyond that, just about every lie pirates use to justify their position is easily blown out of the water with trivial research. The only valid questions which pertain to piracy, is how much is it actually inflating consumer goods and how much revenue is actually lost as a result of piracy. Just about everything else I can recall which is commonly thrown around is either a lie, a myth, or a straw man to keep you distracted from the truth.

And to be absolutely clear here, I absolutely hate DRM!!! But at least I'm pragmatic about why it exists - because pirates force it to be so. But I speak with my wallet, as you should too. If it has DRM, I generally don't buy whatever it is - and I don't steal it either.

The Kindle isn't limited to accessing Wikipedia and Amazon even with the default OS-- there's a web browser under the "experimental" features in the default menu. Amazon doesn't play it up much partly because it's not very good, and partly because presumably they'd lose money if people bought Kindles just for web browsing.

5) Profit?? (fyi, alien found)

Obligatory techcrunch reference: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/28/can-att-handle-the-iphone/#comment-2886015

AT&T: You want answers?

TechCrunch: We think we're entitled to them.

AT&T: You want answers?!

TechCrunch: We want Google Voice on our iPhones.

AT&T: You can't handle the iPhone with Google Voice!

Son, we operate on network that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by carriers with restrictions. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Verizon Wireless? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Google Voice and you curse AT&T. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: That pulling Google Voice, while tragic, probably saved the network. And our existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves the network.

You don't want the Google Voice on your iPhone. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at TechCrunch50, you want us protecting the network. You need us protecting that network. We use words like rate limiting, application approval and restrictions...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.

We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a blog who writes and profits under the blanket of the very network that we provide, then questions the manner in which we provide it. We'd prefer you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, we suggest you pick up a router and build your own network. Either way, We don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to.

TechCrunch: Did you order Google Voice taken down?

AT&T: We did the job you sent us to do.

TechCrunch: Did you order Google Voice taken down?

AT&T: You're goddamn right we did.

single digit reports, all in one country

Except that their are also reports of iPhones exploding in the the Netherlands and Belgium, plus, apparently, the UK and the US, but you're right, it is just a "localized" problem and probably not Apple's fault.

http://twitter.com/apifail2 :D

AT&T told the FCC that they did not have it killed.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/21/att-to-fcc-we-did-not-block-the-google-voice-app-on-the-iphone/

I've had a beef with URL shorteners for a long while now for reasons that have been covered ad nauseam (not the least of which being that in addition to adding significant overhead - typically hundreds of milliseconds per request - they are just plain evil). IMO the best solution is to let webmasters create and advertise their own short links using the "shortlink" link relation (e.g. rel="shortlink" in the HTTP headers and/or HTML HEAD) such that they can be auto-detected by clients who then no longer need to generate their own using 3rd party services. I wrote the shortlink specification a few months ago (based on similar work done by others), released it into the public domain using CC Zero and went about soliciting feedback. The standard got a big shot in the arm last week when WordPress.com announced support for rel=shortlink on over 100 million pages. I've since requested support be introduced into the top 20 Twitter clients (representing over 80% of Twitter usage) and have had only positive feedback so far. A number of other high profile sites like PHP.net and Ars Technica have also jumped on board. Anyway if you, like me, are sick of URL shorteners then you're welcome to give me a hand making them go away...

Sam

I've had a beef with URL shorteners for a long while now for reasons that have been covered ad nauseam (not the least of which being that in addition to adding significant overhead - typically hundreds of milliseconds per request - they are just plain evil). IMO the best solution is to let webmasters create and advertise their own short links using the "shortlink" link relation (e.g. rel="shortlink" in the HTTP headers and/or HTML HEAD) such that they can be auto-detected by clients who then no longer need to generate their own using 3rd party services. I wrote the shortlink specification a few months ago (based on similar work done by others), released it into the public domain using CC Zero and went about soliciting feedback. The standard got a big shot in the arm last week when WordPress.com announced support for rel=shortlink on over 100 million pages. I've since requested support be introduced into the top 20 Twitter clients (representing over 80% of Twitter usage) and have had only positive feedback so far. A number of other high profile sites like PHP.net and Ars Technica have also jumped on board. Anyway if you, like me, are sick of URL shorteners then you're welcome to give me a hand making them go away...

Sam

So, they are going open. How is this going to solve issues that make shorteners evil ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/06/are-url-shorteners-a-necessary-evil-or-just-evil/ )?

transparency loss (great, there is db that can resolve links. Are browsers supposed to querry 'shortener like' urls and display proper ones?)

rot & reliability loss (tr.im claims they will be forever open and totally not sell domain to highest bidder and whatnot, but domain is still weakest link - it goes broken and tons of links get broken too)

pointless proxy (great, so it is now pointless 'open' proxy. yay).

Nothing on the net is totally secure as we can easily see. I think an individual should never post anything that would put themselves at risk...ie the picture of them drinking at a strip club comes to mind... I think there is a propensity to lose privacy on the net. Web finger http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/14/google-points-at-webfinger-your-gmail-address-could-soon-be-your-id/ is moving toward a digital ID for everyone on the net. Scary.

Actually this administration is very much checking on anti-competitive industries unlike the previous administration. It's unlikely this sort of thing would get approved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051101189.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/31/fcc-takes-on-apple-and-att-over-google-voice-rejection/

It's already shining a light on many major companies like Google, AT&T, Apple, and Microsoft.

.. at your own peril: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/13/the-zune-hd-september-15-apple-ipod-event-likely-september-8/

Sorry, I assumed Slashdot was using the same sources at the TechCrunch article I read earlier. You can read it at their site.

I would imagine how long IE6 is around would depend heavily on one thing - support by extremely popular websites. If YouTube, and other highly popular sites, decide to remove support for IE6, possibly even refusing to work with it, I'd imagine that IE6 could easily disappear almost overnight.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/

Because Twitter is down and he's still recovering.

You know the old acronym, BING: But... It's Not Google!

Quoting: "Microsoft will pay Yahoo $50 million a year for three years..."

How does that fit? Yahoo rejected an offer of $44.6 Billion, but accepts "$50 million a year"?

I'm guessing that if they had just Googled it, they would have found information that indicates the idea is foolish. I'm not saying I know how the idea is foolish, I'm only saying that it seems to me that something is wrong somewhere.

Nobody mentioned twitter?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/19/the-anatomy-of-the-twitter-attack/

LOTS of lead-in on that. Long story short: Password recovery email sent to abandoned and thus recycled and avaiable hotmail account. Register hotmail account, send recovery email. Use gmail account to do password resets all over the damn place.

Google docs & everything Google was done on the first step.

That after the FCC probing into Apple's nasty rejection of Google Voice, from now on we're gonna have to live with Michael Arrington proclaiming how, in his modesty and disregard for material things he saved the world from tyranny.

May god have mercy on us all.

Yet, as I mentioned in the other /. submission, here is one tiny shred of reason to think that a government entity might, just might, have a tiny shred of value. And the FCC made it clear that a "blanket" of confidential docs concerning this would not be accepted, which means at least *some* info concerning the latest brouhauha will be public. Seriously, for once, kudos to the FCC.

the iPhone needs to be opened up to other carriers, plain and simple.

One more year. If ATT wants to keep the exclusive arrangement going they'd better straighten up, otherwise the iPhone is a free agent in 2010.

If that is true, its interesting that AT&T allows GV apps for Blackberry users...

That is a good analogy, especially because it is remarkably close to something that actually happened - and the taxi drivers won:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/ill-never-let-canada-live-this-down/

The issue was reported on Reddit.com 16 hours ago. At no time, apparently, was access to img.4chan.org slow. Also, at present the IP address 207.126.64.181 connects directly to 4chan.org, as it should.

So, AT&T, is not blocking img.4chan.org, the company is only blocking some of its users. Check 4chan status. Quote: "UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us."

Don't forget the "mirror" applications that do even less. Yet they've got a high click through rate.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/17/top-iphone-app-developer-was-losing-out-on-2000-a-day-because-of-sloppy-coding/

"If anyone else has complaints about Firefox, post them here. [My emphasis] For a browser that's taken nearly a third of the market, it's doing so with an incredibly broken development model and backend...

"Until then, Firefox is just another out-of-control Open Source project that needs a good stiff slap in the face."

Agreed. Firefox has had broken, weak management because a socially inept lawyer, Winifred Mitchell Baker who has no technical knowledge or interest, was the head of the Mozilla foundation. Now she is Chairman of the Board.

"On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?!"

I just started a computer that has Firefox 3.5 installed. I started Firefox and opened a web page. It used 200 MB.

"The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area."

Agreed. But apparently Firefox developers work on only what interests them, and they don't use browsers very heavily.

"No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall."

Yes, but the CPU hogging bug is what makes Firefox slow after several days, not the memory hogging.

"I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing."

Yes, that's happened to me, also. The update procedure is buggy.

"Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off."

Not correct. The Bookmarks toolbar can be turned off.

"One time, a user with some programming experience suggested a bugfix to the wishlist. One programmer, whom I will not publicly name, suggested the user submit patches "once his balls dropped," if he were even male. If this were a real company and not a bunch of arrogant hacker hippies, user antagonism and sexism would never be acceptable."

Agreed, but it's worse than you say.

"For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either."

Translation: Layoffs at Mozilla Foundation. As soon as Google's Chrome browser has sufficient Plug-ins, why would anyone use the quirky Firefox? But it may be years until Chrome has the necessary plug-ins. On the other hand, Google pays the Mozilla Foundation more than $55,000,000 per year to make Google the default search engine, so maybe someone at Google will hurry the development of Chrome to save huge amounts of money in future years.

MS would never do such a thing. It would utterly ruin their reputation as a company (especially among businesses), and expose them to massive legal liabilities, and they would gain nothing of any use from it.

Gain nothing? They'd cripple their biggest competitor in a market that they offered almost 45 billion dollars just to compete in.

Legal liabilities? The threat from those would have to be pretty big. Again, they were willing to drop 45 billion. How sure are you that the legal liabilities you're thinking of would cost them more than that? Particularly, say, if they were able to steal the top search spot from Google because of this kind of tactic? I'd think the only threat that'd be big enough to really be a deterrent here would be the breakup of the company, and I don't see any reason to believe the government would actually do that.

And reputation? There's a lot of evidence that Microsoft sometimes simply values winning and control over reputation. You force people to need you, you don't need to care how they feel about it seems to have been their operative philosophy.

I'm not saying it's a move you should expect to see tomorrow. But if for any reason Microsoft either gets scared or smells blood in the water, nobody should think it's impossible and certainly not that it's beyond the company's makeup to want to try such a thing.

Two errors with that claim. First, as others have posted, Bing is a re-branding of MSN Live or whatever it was called. Second, it is a response to Wolfram Alpha which, unlike the marketing initiative from MS, is something new. MS has a pattern of re-naming failed products like Live to hide bad reviews or avoid the downside to brand recognition.

Apply the lessons learned elsewhere. When you see a product or service from MS spewed in a media blitz, especially one touted as being new, look around for the target of MS' copying and if that copy is a re-tread of an earlier, failed product. In this case, the original being copied is Wolfram's Alpha.

Google says the software architecture will basically be the current Chrome browser running inside âoea new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.â

link

Crunchpad, crunchpad, crunchpad!

Have you considered the Crunch ?

I know, I know, it's billed as being a web-only tablet at this point in time, but I honestly can't see it being released without support for the PDF format, it's just too common to overlook. I know I'll be getting one when it becomes available.

I do agree with some of the people here regarding the Kindle's price versus lack of features as compared to a laptop. Personaly, I quite like using my pocket pc (touch diamond 2) for reading ebooks. The screen is small but the 480x800 resolution is very nice. The only thing it lacks is a good cbr/cbz reader for reading comics, but I found that an eeepc is perfect for that task so I won't complain. Perhaps the 200 dollar tablet that was mentioned on this site some time ago would be a good alternative to the kindle: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

The lower the price of production gets, the more valuable IP gets. Consider cars for instance (this is Slashdot after all). The basics of building a car cost far less today than they did in 1950. Put another way, if you wanted to build a 1950-level car today, you could sell it for a lot less (in real dollars) than you could then. Manufacturing technology and management is just far more efficient now.

But do cars cost a lot less now than they did in 1950? No. The reason is that today's cars are far more complex and capable machines than cars were in the 1950s. A greater percentage of a car's value today is IP than it was in 1950.

Pharmaceuticals are an even better example. It is not that expensive to manufacture pharmaceuticals. What makes them expensive is their design, and the knowledge of how to use them safely. If you pick up any given pharmaceutical pill, a huge portion of its value is the IP is represents.

Finally consider the pure-IP products like software and music. The cost to reproduce a hit game or album is very, very low. But it is no easier to produce the ORIGINAL of a hit game or album now than it was decades ago. It's not like every band blows up like the Beatles today. If anything the cheaper reproduction has made it even harder to create truly stand-out IP that sells widely. In a world where every song is free, we still have only so much time to listen. Without price the only basis for competition is how good or catchy the song is itself--the pure IP. And the Pirate Bay does not help produce that.

A big failing of Anderson and others (he's certainly not the first to play the "free is inevitable" game), is a failure to take into account the role of law in markets. The law places limits within which the free market operates, including with respect to IP. If it is against the law to freely copy IP, with fines or jail at stake, there will be a deterrence to "free" and copies of IP will retain a price within the official, legal market.

Too bad last.fm releases it's info to the RIAA. I believe you are better off with some other service.

If someone called ME a boffin, I might be obliged to bandy their knickers a bit.

But this begs the question - can anyone at NASA do the moonwalk convincingly?

Impetuous minds want to know.

It's boffn, not boffin! Did you miss the whole Web 2.0 thing.

The Wall Street Journal articles have problems with lack of attribution and stated lack of verification of this info. If the story true (and I think it probably is), the authors of the articles need to elaborate.

Immediately after the article was posted on their site, I wrote the writers and editors the following email:

Date: Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 01:23
Subject: Questionable standards for reporting by Wall Street Journal journalists Kane, Lublin, and Meckler
To: Yukari Iwatani Kane , "Joann S. Lublin" , Laura Meckler
Cc: "Robert J. Thomson" , New York Times News Department

Dear Journalists of The Wall Street Journal,

The two articles referred to below, published June 20, 2009 on the website of The Wall Street Journal, state controversially without attribution that Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs received a liver transplant in Tennessee approximately two months ago:

Reported June 20, 2009 by Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin, "Jobs Had Liver Transplant",
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124546193182433491.html

Reported June 20, 2009 by Laura Meckler, "Jobs's Transplant Highlights Differing Wait Times",
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124546226305633529.html


As journalists you are expected to seek reliable sources and to accompany reports of controversial facts with attribution. However, as Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin state in the first article, "The specifics of Mr. Jobs's surgery couldn't be established." They further state explicit lack of verification of Job's putative surgery by spokespeople for each of the three hospitals in Tennessee designated as liver-transplant centers.

As of ten minutes ago I could find only the following two other online articles reporting on this topic. As their sources these articles cite only The Wall Street Journal, and at that as a secondary source:

Reported June 19, 2009 by MG Siegler, "Not Only Was Steve Jobs Sick. He Had A Liver Transplant",
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/19/not-only-was-steve-jobs-sick-he-had-a-liver-transplant/

Reported June 19, 2009 by Peter Kavka, "Report: Steve Jobs Is Recovering From Liver Transplant, Still Coming Back to Apple",
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090619/report-steve-jobs-is-recovering-from-liver-transplant-still-coming-back-to-apple/


Do you have primary sources of this information? Have you checked and cross checked this information? If you have evidence, have you validated its authenticity? Do you have corroboration?

If so, please elaborate in your articles.

eh, how wrong is the summary. Opera 10 != Opera Unite. Its just a feature in it. Surprisingly, TechCrunch has a good summary http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/that-reinvention-of-the-web-thing-opera-was-talking-about-its-called-opera-unite/

Fotowoosh?

lol, I love this snippet from that post:

The 3D image is constructed in Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) format, meaning you currently need a VRML reader to see it (future browsers will likely build this functionality in)

Wow, apparently Arrington is completely unaware that VRML is a 15 year old spec that's been ignored by "future browsers" for over a decade because it's crap, and is practically unused.

Just what "future browsers" need -- a bloated 3d presentation format that targets a problem that no one has, and is less capable than already supported technologies like flash and java applets.

Fotowoosh?

Highly unlikely that it could work in a way acceptable for viewing movies. Cardboard cutouts instead of actual 3D at best...

Not so fast. Same source indicates the bing has already fallen back down to (less than) live.com levels.

TechCrunch: Bing was #2 for a day then Yahoo regained its place as Bing fell.

"As Matt Cutts (who yes, works for Google) points out in the comments, StatCounter updates every few hours, so there is also data for today already. And itâ(TM)s more bad news for Bing. Itâ(TM)s now down to 5.65% in the U.S. â" yes, thatâ(TM)s less than what Live.com was at last month."

It's hard to see how someone wrote this post today - when the same site shows that Bing surpassing Yahoo! only lasted for a day. TechCrunch already pointed this out yesterday. Bing may or may not have a big impact - but I think it will take some more time before we know whether it will or not. There is certainly a very long way to go before it even begins to approach google.

I can't wait to spit http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/ on it!

I hadn't seen the page with that image ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/ ).

Prototype C is the actual model they're using for demos, but you're right, that 'near-final industrial design' does appear to have a higher res. 1680x1050 at a guess which would fit with your estimates as well.

Getting a screen of that resolution on something like this isn't outside the realms of probability. But if they can do that within a $300 price range, that'd be impressive. I'd certainly consider getting one with that resolution.

*Anything* is uncomfortable to use when laying on your back. Hell, most people's arms get tired of holding up a paperback in about 30 seconds. The unfortunate issue with the touchpad device is that it appears that the only comfortable position to use it in, is the one featured on the product page.

It could just be me, but this is the picture I was mainly referring to. That looks quite a bit higher than 1280x800 to me. Just doing a very quick check on the nytimes.com website shows that that's at least 1024 pixels along the short axis, and closer to 1600 or 1800 along the long axis.

The second link from the slashdot summary, describing the current product, is extremely short, and is essentially the same text as the slashdot summary. A longer and better article is here. This page has technical specs: 12-inch touchscreen (1024x768 4:3), via nano, 1 GB ram, 4 GB flash, wifi, accelerometer, camera, 3 lb, currently running ubuntu.

Sorry, but $300 is not "dirt cheap," IMO. Zareason.com or system76.com will routinely sell you a full-featured desktop system for $300. WalMart and Sears have sold desktop machines like the Everex gPC as cheap as $200. Target has had the eeePC for $280. This is not even something you'd want to use as a full-function computer, so I'd say $300 is actually pretty expensive. Of course some people may be willing to pay for style or convenience. But as far as convenience, I'm not convinced I'd want something portable like this that didn't have a lid to protect the screen.

"Dirt cheap" is going to be ARM-based computers retailing for $50-100, which we'll probably have within a few years.