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I look at Windows 8 and makes me miss Win7 GUI. This however is an improvement over Win7 and is by far the best UI mock-up for Windows 8 I've seen. Microsoft should just hire this guy.

In some communities in the US where the copper infrastructure was damaged by Superstorm Sandy, Verizon has sought to abandon copper and replace it with VoiceLink, a cell-based solution.

And it takes your typical government contractor to slay that particular monster.

"You wanted it in a standard data format? You didn't mention that in your RFP. That'll be (a lot) extra."
"Sorry FBI guys, our data doesn't look like your data, that'll cost a couple of million dollars to fix".

And besides, Iris scans change over time. You were better off getting fingerprints.

ah yes, Stock Price == Measure of Success

Depends. Posting record results last quarter is perhaps another measure.

But the steadily increasing stock price of Microsoft all through the period since the launch of Windows 8 late last year shows that the markets have a very different impression of how well Microsoft are doing - currently and expected - than the Microsoft is dying mantra on Slashdot (which is a claim starting to rival 'this is the year of Linux on the desktop' in long-term tenacity)

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/23/4253874/att-new-1-2-million-smartphone-q1-2013-financials

They added almost 300,000 subscribers, sold 6 million phones and they grossed $16.4 Billion (up 3.4% from Q1 2012).

Yeah they really need that extra cash.

No backward compatibility. You cannot play xbox360 games. More information is on Theverge http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350662/new-xbox-has-no-backwards-compatibilty

Google+ hasnt had a lot of traction with me, so I am not really sure if this is just going to be one less google product that I will be using now.

It's going to be a lot more interesting, and presumably compelling when it's completed. Hangouts isn't intended as a simple chat client replacement.

Google dropping XMPP support is only mildly interesting, but the reason behind it is far more ambitious than TFA discusses. The Verge has a better article, but TLDR is that It's part of a long-term plan to change the way communication works on phones and computers.

XMPP obviously won't be suitable for unifying so many different communication paths. Given Google's efforts with WebRTC, I suspect that'll be the underlying standard for their new platform, though it hasn't been stated as such anywhere I'm aware of.

They're officialy dropping it. It was recently announced in an interview:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-mess
(see video, circa 5:09)

You say it like a joke, but that would be Warner Brothers: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/21/3899356/john-mcafee-gets-another-movie-deal

> If it's getting cheaper for companies to run robot factories in the US than to employ Chinese labourers

It's even getting cheaper to use robots in china than to employ chinese laborers.

YouTube has licensing. The vast majority of songs, especially new ones, are released onto YouTube by the record labels themselves, free for everyone to enjoy unless you happen to live in a country with its own brand of insanity (GEMA in German, for example) or they have a branch in your country and they agreed that that branch would have to upload it instead. Keep in mind that record labels have flooded YouTube with DMCA requests before after negotiations broke down and they removed their videos;
http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/12/21/1710249/warner-music-pulls-videos-off-youtube

Perhaps a bit more timely, remember the story of a Windows Phone app, by Microsoft, which allowed users to download the videos, strips ads, and allows users to view videos on devices that the uploader has specified they shouldn't be viewable on?
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/05/11/0041224/microsoft-youtube-app-strips-ads-adds-download

Well, Google wants that app yanked right the beep now.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334030/google-demands-microsoft-remove-youtube-windows-phone-app

"Unfortunately, by blocking advertising and allowing downloads of videos, your application cuts off a valuable ongoing revenue source for creators, and causes harm to the thriving content ecosystem on YouTube,"

YouTube themselves aren't fond of people 'grabbing' things, and their legal department could probably do without the legitimate DMCA takedown requests in addition to the not-so-legitimate ones if for whatever reason the record labels didn't renew any agreements and went back to filing those instead. The current audio recognition stuff would probably be bumped up to just keep even more of the record labels' material from being uploaded in the first place, and there'd be little reason to having to block YouTube.

As it is, though, most people I know don't even 'grab' things from YouTube, let alone trying to find them on a 'pirate' website (even though it's not that hard) - they just look up the song on their phone and listen to it streaming from YouTube directly.. and that's just the ones who haven't gone with Spotify yet / buy the tracks on iTunes or Amazon or 7digital or, etc.

I think you're right.

Although Microsoft isn't listing the exact feedback, Reller admits that the company has heard the cries for a Start button. "We have heard that, we definitely have heard that and taken that into account," she explains. "We've really also tried to understand what people are really asking for when they're asking for that."

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/7/4306328/windows-8-1-release-date-pricing-windows-blue

Nothing is going to change. They appear to be making every attempt to avoid the actual problem in an effort to make it seem that they are actually concerned; yet, when it comes to bringing the actual Start menu back in its traditional form, it appears that there's no chance of that happening. They are too busy trying to come up with some new abomination, which will only serve to piss even more people off and cause even more confusion. They refuse to acknowledge that all people want is the Start menu back in its previous form, by clicking a button in the corner of the screen. They are trying their damnedest to somehow "prove" that they were right all along by trying to find and somehow "fix" a problem that doesn't even exist.

All Google needs to do is offer a commercial licence, for a small fee, to all Android OEM's that indemnifies them. This way if Microsoft has an issue with Android or Linux they can take on Google directly. But, we all know that would never happen because Microsoft clearly knows that Google would single handily invalidate all of their obvious, worthless and prior art ridden patents one by one.

That will not happen because Google can't protect itself(i.e the Motorola it bought which loses billions every year by the way because of making crap phones), how can it protect its partners? It's about to get bitchslapped for trying to abuse FRAND standard patents on H.264 and WiFi for extortion.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/06/eu-rules-googles-motorola-abused-patents-in-seeking-injunction-against-apple
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/4271432/does-anyone-know-why-google-bought-motorola
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/technology/07iht-google07.html?_r=0
http://www.zdnet.com/in-microsoft-patent-spat-ruling-hints-that-google-grossly-overpaid-for-motorola-7000014582/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/motorola-buy-delivers-google-more-heartbreak-than-help.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-slapped-google-around-in-court-and-its-becoming-clear-google-overpaid-for-motorola-2013-4

For some it's really not that easy. Paul Miller's article about leaving the internet for a full year is pretty interesting, and touches on some important aspects of social networking. Facebook enables casual long distance relationships that are often not realistic for many of us. I rarely talk to my best friend from high school on the phone or via text, but we do interact via Facebook pretty frequently. Without that social network link, we would've fallen out of touch over the years - with it, we're able to stay relatively up to date with minimal effort.

Now, do my friends deserve *more* than minimal effort? Of course. But the reality of leaving one's hometown (or college town or longtime employer) makes it unlikely that I'm going to see/call/write those friends of mine on a regular enough basis to keep close connections going, something Facebook has made possible for me.

For those of us with (even mildly) busy lives who have met many wonderful people over the years, social networking has been terribly useful.

You have a point, but it is an important discussion, and the answers are different in different locales. We need some very clear parameters about the way surveillance is used in all jurisdictions.

I'm not one to immediately discount the use of surveillance, but I recognize it could quickly be abused.

Can you imagine the possible abuses of this little gem from a month or two back?

The cost per lumen of LEDs has held the technology back as a viable replacement for incandescent bulbs for all-purpose commercial and residential lighting.

Really? CREE started distributing LED bulbs a month or two ago through Home Depot for less than $10 each. I own two of them.

450 lumens for $9.97 is 0.0222 per lumen. It's rated to last 22.8 years. That's $0.0010 per lumen per year of use.

Let's compare that to an "equivalent" (the cree is a 40-watt equivalent bulb) incandescent bulb. $8.77 for a pack of 6 is $1.46 per bulb.

300 lumens for $1.46 is $0.0049 per lumen. But it's only rated to last 0.9 years. That's $0.0544 per lumen per year of use. It's more than 54 times more expensive than the CREE. That's before you look at the electricity you'll be saving (6 watts to get more light than you would out of a 40 watt incandescent).

Home Depot is also selling CREE's 60-watt equivalent:

800 lumens for $12.97 is 0.0162 per lumen.It's rated to last 22.8 years. That's $0.0007 per lumen per year of use. The incandescent is 77 times more expensive.

As much as I love CREE LEDs in general, I prefer Philips 10.5-watt bulb. The bulb itself it more aesthetically pleasing (in my opinion) and it diffuses the light better (the CREE focuses all the bulbs in one area and its very apparent from the very bright spot in the middle). I own six of them. Home Depot sells them for $27.97 for a two pack.

800 lumens for $13.99 is $0.0175 per lumen. Rated to last 18.3 years. That's $0.0010 per lumen per year of use. If I'm going to spent the next two decades with a bulb, I'll spend the extra three hundredths of a cent per lumen on something I really like. Still less than one fiftieth the cost of an incandescent per lumen.

The only things I see holding back LED bulbs are misinformation and lack of availability (Home Depot is the only major brick and mortar store I've found that carries them). That, and some freaky designs that don't look like light bulbs... I bought one of these out of curiosity, and its appearance, on or off, just irritates me for some reason... if I was redesigning my living room to look like Quark's, I'd go with these all the way, but since I'm not "that guy" it's in a lamp that I almost never use. Which means it will probably outlive me. It may even survive to the 24th century and end up in Quark's.

Microsoft's popular Security Essentials anti-virus software has failed to gain the latest certificate from the AV-TEST institute. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/17/3885962/microsoft-security-essentials-fails-anti-virus-certification-test "In antimalware testing against a range of products, AV-TEST failed to certify AhnLab V3 Internet Security 8.0, Microsoft Security Essentials 4.1, and PC Tools Internet Security 2012 out of a total of 25 different vendors. Microsoft's own anti-virus software failed to adequately protect against 0-day malware attacks, scoring an average of 71 percent vs. the industry average of 92 percent."

Nobody cares whether its original they care if it works.

Except those are the most common form of malware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Antivirus_(malware) I'm going to skip over active X and Macro Virus or even .asf. In contect of this article Security Essentials anti-virus software has failed to gain the latest certificate from the AV-TEST institute. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/17/3885962/microsoft-security-essentials-fails-anti-virus-certification-test

"Pack of four" but you can't define it.

The leading technical companies are considered to be Apple; Amazon; Google and Facebook. They are sometimes also referred to as the "Gang of four" or "the four horsemen". The original reference I know is from Eric Schmidt http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/11/3487634/google-eric-schmidt-interview-apple-vs-google-ecosystems In context of this article "Schmidt notes the larger battle is between what he calls a "gang of four" consisting of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google, which are "all different, all competitors, [and] all making enormous investments." When told that Microsoft wasn't on that list, Schmidt called the omission "deliberate."".

Perhaps they are: Windows 8.1 will include boot to desktop. Good news if true, all they need to do then is bring back the Start button & menu.

Trouble is, most folks on Android are known to loathe "paying for any software."

This is an article about an Apple user being attacked for Piracy by an Apple developer by Hyjacking their twitter accounts and posting confessions of piracy :) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/ios-apps-hijack-twitter-accounts-post-false-confessions-of-piracy/. Perhaps you should should stop Demonising Android users. I'm personally willing to post screenshots of my Play account, showing all my purchases.

And here is the sad tale of an Android Twitter client running out of of their 100,000 tokens despite having only about 40,000 paid downloads. So even for something as useless as a Twitter client, you have 60% pirates,

Even then, we may be too late: http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/12/4217786/arctic-ice-free-summer-2050-noaa-study

No one has shown that anthropogenic global warming is going to be a serious problem, let's say, a problem that requires a major adjustments in societies, much less an existential problem, something that threatens our existence somehow. Haven't you actually read the predictions and the time frames that these predictions are made over?

There is a touch interface on the rim of the glasses:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4013406/i-used-google-glass-its-the-future-with-monthly-updates

I read the Verge article on Glass:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4013406/i-used-google-glass-its-the-future-with-monthly-updates

The $1,500 is the price for developers. It's a high price because they don't want casual parties to be purchasing this limited run, they want committed developers to make apps. They are aware that there's no app market for these (because this is the first in it's market).

You can touch the outside rim of the glasses to manipulate menus. I imagine this is limited to just directional scrolling.

IIRC, it requires a phone with a data connection for most of it's features. I'm guessing that a lot of work is just going to be offloaded to the phone entirely. A lot of people are imagining some crazy always-on life-changing gadget, but given that these are just glasses, and that battery capacity hasn't improved dramatically in the last couple of years, I'm going to guess that these imagined features aren't going to happen.

Similarly, the always-on surveillance distopia that people are freaking out about is also not going to happen for the same reason. There just isn't enough battery power to just record everything, all the time. Especially if you want to do anything else with them in the meantime.

This is absolute bullshit. If anyone who approved this fucking article knew what they were talking about, they would know that Google held a Glass developer conference wherein they explain the capabilities of Glass, guidelines, and API abilities.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/4186182/google-explains-how-to-create-glass-services

Fucking idiots. The entire Mirror API is explained in that video. Developers(or anyone) who have done a simple Google search know how the hell to develop for Glass right now, why doesn't the author of this /. post?

The way I understand it, it only records or takes a photo when you tell it to, and you can be a lot more discrete with a mobile phone camera (pretending to text) if you really want to record people without their permission.

Read the review on TheVerge [1] The author clearly describes how they went to a Starbucks and all the other recording equipment was asked to be turned off, but the cashier didn't know about the Glass, and so that portion got recorded. From my link:

At one point during my time with Glass, we all went out to navigate to a nearby Starbucks — the camera crew I’d brought with me came along. As soon as we got inside however, the employees at Starbucks asked us to stop filming. Sure, no problem. But I kept the Glass’ video recorder going, all the way through my order and getting my coffee. Yes, you can see a light in the prism when the device is recording, but I got the impression that most people had no idea what they were looking at. The cashier seemed to be on the verge of asking me what I was wearing on my face, but the question never came. He certainly never asked me to stop filming.

So just like the Macbook with it's green light when the iSight camera came on, Glass shows a green light when recording. I wonder what laptop was abused by middle school admins to take illegal photos of kids in their bedrooms? [2]. If the only indicator on Glass is a green light, it will be hacked away (or covered up) the first time someone wants to take a spy photo/video.

I would most certainly ban Google Glass on any company premises for which I was responsible for securing. I'm not sure I'd allow someone with Glass to enter my house.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4013406/i-used-google-glass-its-the-future-with-monthly-updates
[2] http://boingboing.net/2011/06/08/lower-merion-student.html

Odd, it seems someone should notify John Legere that he's dishing up some new fangled bullshit instead of the old fangled bullshit we all know and hate. He also said, "This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying?" But apparently that was only about his competitor's pricing models ...

There is also a special "recovery key" that can be used to get in to reset the trusted devices.

And that could never cause a problem...

Major security hole allows Apple passwords to be reset with only email address, date of birth

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/22/4136242/major-security-hole-allows-apple-id-passwords-reset-with-email-date-of-birth

Seems that anyone can reset your password knowing your email and birthdate for the ones not using the two-factor authentication. And that option is available in just a few countries.

Hopely it gets fixed in very short time or could get a massive impact in all the world.

The only reason it would ever be nearly impossible for objective journalism to cover this is if there was some sort of cover-up in the first place. Which, gosh-darn-it... sounds *JUST* like a conspiracy theory.

You've had three chances to provide an alternative explanation. You have not. That says it all.

Pot, meet kettle.

No, I have been arguing a hypothesis. Offered a copy of the very resignation letter. The best you've come up with is a PR denial that will be belied by sales data post-release

If consumer retaliation over such games actually played some part in this turn of events, then it stands to reason that would be endeavoring to learn from their mistakes. But they are showing no intention of changing their behavior, which suggests that they weren't that negatively impacted by the consumer outcry.

If you conveniently ignore that whole "oops" EA game giveaway. I look forward to the strained rationalization you will apply to sales data, financial results, and further management attrition.

Which suggests that the notion they are firing their CEO over it may be nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the person who posted the summary.

Then pray-tell, why was he fired?

Well, to be truthful, the guy didn't really set himself up to be "remorseful" or anything like it.

After all if you give them a reason to treat you harshly, don't be surprised if they do. Wanting the maximum sentence?

Perhaps that MIT charm school has a lot of merit on how to interact with people. Given the comments on that article were of the "screw etiquette" and "why should I dress up?!" or "society's rules do not apply", I guess it's not really a surprise when society decides you don't fit in to their norms (and they outnumber us). Give people a reason to not relate to you, and don't be surprised when they don't. Give people a reason to like you and they'll let you off with a lesser sentence.

Over the top sentence? For the crime actually committed, most likely. But when you're characterized as a ne'er-do-well or unrelatable to the public and your actions don't suggest you have any remorse, the courts don't generally look too highly on that behavior.

Whichever side of the issue you stand on, it's worth noting that arguably the most prominent signatories to this letter and/or the companies they represent - Intel and Google - came under fire for allegedly secretly conspiring together to block worker mobility ("The no-hire paper trail Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt didn't want you to see"), so a cynic might suggest perhaps they're not quite as concerned with labor's free-and-natural-flow when it doesn't suit their needs. Also, Ireland seems to be finding that importing tech labor isn't quite the rising-tide-that-lifts-all-boats that it was cracked up to be ("Ireland too scared to tax big tech, Let the poor eat potatos"), "Google paid only £5.6m tax despite £10bn turnover").

...

Yes, they are, they cost about $100 and walmart sells them.

You may have heard of them, they are called 'Kinect' and with oversampling, the resolution is rather impressive.

Google for Kinect Fusion or here is one of the related links: http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/6/4071162/kinect-fusion-3d-object-scanning-coming-in-future-kinect-for-windows

I'll readily admit to spending money on microtransactions that I thought were worthwhile. Turbine's games, for instance, at least have some value in some of the transactions. The issue is that EA is so bad at veiling their attempt to suck their customers dry.

Take, for instance, today's reports from The Verge on EA's Real Racing 3. In this game, you pay Real Money to repair damage to your car, and you pay More Real Money to make those repairs take less time.

What they essentially did was say, "Here's a game that totally looks awesome, but we made it suck so that you can pay us money to unsuck it." And worse yet, they did this in a game that already has ample opportunities for purchasing value-added content (e.g., new cars, new tracks, new music, special paintjobs, etc.).

I guess when they sued Zynga over that whole Sims ripoff, they started looking at what Zynga was doing and thought it was a wonderful idea, so then they just ripped off Zynga's entire business model and turned it to eleven.

This is probably being driven by online gambling. Satoshi Dice is now doing more Bitcoin transactions than all other users combined.

A far cry from the end of 2011.

And a far cry from the end of 2012!

Sorry ... on a more serious note (if such a thing is possible with BTC) everything is proceeding according to plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1uyQZNg2vE

read the well stylized article::

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4013406/i-used-google-glass-its-the-future-with-monthly-updates

To me it looks like it could revolutionize.
I could never get into smart phones, but this sounds way more of what I would consider "virtual reality". What I pictured in the 80s and 90s of that anyways. Its not lawnmower man, you are there in the real world. Altered states of reality.

Let's see. I wrote my "translation" based on the summary and the article. True, those things are known to be incorrect sometimes. So let's examine your claims (which in another post you claim should be modded up because they are factually correct).

- Native Client apps are cloud apps - they just use a different client technology.
- Second Chrome OS (and Chrome) does have native apps - via NaCl - and has for a while. This isn't new at all.

Okay, first, what exactly do you think NaCl stands for (in Google world, I mean. Regular people know it's the chemical formula of table salt). Could it be... "Native Client"? Why yes, it looks like it could be. Your point one and two contradict each other. Secondly, a web app that runs native code sounds very much to me like:

Google figured out that a computer that runs only cloud based stuff isn't such a good idea. But, since Chrome OS doesn't have native apps, they had to hack those native apps into Chrome, where they run "almost as fast" as they would if they were proper applications under a real OS.

(I said that, by the way, not you)

Next:

- This isn't hacked into Chrome - it's not part of Chrome at all.

"Native Client was formerly available as an experimental disabled-by-default feature in the Google Chrome web browser.[2] The feature is enabled from version 14 of Chrome;"

Sounds like it's part of Chrome to me.

- There is no way that anyone at Google would want to write such a misleading and confusing summary.

Well, you're half right. Nobody at Google would want to say anything bad about their expensive new product. Well, except the VP who said "You'll never see another Pixel in your life." But that was just a poor choice of words. And I'm sure he wouldn't have capitalized it like that if he'd written it instead of spoken it.

This is just a new cloud app, that runs on an existing client technology that's been built-into Chrome and Chrome OS for a while.

No, it's a native app with a cloud launcher/downloader that runs through a sandbox and translation/interpretation/emulation/filtering/whatever layer in Chrome, which Chrome OS needs because it must, for some reason, adhere to this idea that the browser IS the OS (like those marketing peons who take Marshall McLuhan's emphatic hyperbole too seriously). Basically, a Java applet, with the added inconvenience that you have to worry about the architecture of the users's machine. So you get to run a native application through a browser, almost as fast as it would run if you just omitted the browser part. Just like I said.

Thanks, it's nice to realize you're also right when you were just posting a funny over coffee at eight in the morning.

Just remember, the music industry saw growth and "profit" in 2012, the first time since 1999, before this copyright protection went in place.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/26/4031912/music-industry-grew-revenue-for-first-time-since-1999
http://247wallst.com/2013/02/26/music-industry-posts-first-profit-since-1999/

What do you mean "doesn't happen under Android" ? Have you been sleeping under a rock?

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/12/31/android_malware_using_google_play_store_icon_to_trick_users

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/03/android-malware-emerges-on-google-play-which-installs-a-trojan-on-your-pc-uses-your-microphone-to-record-you/

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/10/3751202/google-android-malware-scanner-test

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/05/android-malware-surges-despite-googles-efforts-to-bounce-dodgy-apps-off-its-platform-f-secure-ids-51447-unique-samples-in-q3/

If the Play Store gets so much attention from malware writers, the PC ecosystem with a couple of billion of PCs most of them with good network connections(for spam and DDoS) and used to login to banks and in heavy corporate use across the largest companies in the world has no chance not attracting malware.

How about an LG TV?

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/25/4027018/lg-buys-webos-smart-tv

All this an a sainted device from Google

Except people [including myself have been incredibly impressed with having a high resolution; quad-core; small tablet running latest Android....and so are the reviews. Top searches on Google

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/google-nexus-7-1087040/review 4.5 stars
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/tablets/379261/nexus-7 3x 5 out of 6 and 1x6 out of 6
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1297408/google-nexus-7 5 out of 5 User 5 out of 5 expert
http://reviews.cnet.com/google-nexus-7/ 4 out 5
http://www.wired.co.uk/reviews/tablets/2012-11/google-nexus-7 9 out of 10
http://www.theverge.com/products/nexus-7/5831 8.8 expert 9.1 User
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/tablets/google-nexus-7.aspx 4 out of 5
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406552,00.asp 4.5 out of 5

I know you love Apple but right now Apple need compelling products, priced competitively not fanatics spreading lies. It simply tarnishes the Apple brand more, and its been damaged enough just lately.

That's what people said about the Galaxy Note. Somehow though last August they hit 10 million sales after less than a year. Many billions of dollars in revenue will help soothe the pain of being made fun of.

Actually when Android first came out phone makers didn't want to make a high-end "candybar" phone because it would be ridiculously expensive, so Google paid to have one made and the demand proved itself enough that phone makers came onboard and Google could retire their own-brand phone. Now Android is the number one smartphone OS, nearly 3x ahead of its nearest competitor and by itself over two thirds of global unit sales. This is probably that evolution again.

OEMs ought to buy a hint one day and when Google says "we're thinking of making an X..." leap into that briar patch. God knows OEMs have made enough failed Wintel and Windows Phone products to hit their career fail quota, and on the winners they make bupkiss, nada, zilch. Google doesn't want to own-brand their products and they're not great at it, but if OEMs will stand in the the way of progress Google needs must march around them and move on. Waiting and begging for people to let go of their Windows obsession was for the old way when Google was not a more influential, successful and bigger company than Microsoft is. Google are becoming less patient with impediments to their vision of the future. Once it was "we think this might be neat." Now it's "help or get out of the way."

Driving Google to get good at product manufacturing, sales and delivery is not a good incumbent device OEM survival strategy. If OEMs make them do that, Google will be as good at it as everything else they set their minds to. I.E. Google will eat the entire client device OEM ecosystem if they must to drive progress. They'd rather not - the progress is what they want and if the OEMs will deliver it they can put their effort in other places. But if they must, they will.

You mean Windows Blue (yeah I'm kinda thinkin they shoulda stayed away from anything associated with BSOD) the new subscription based OS?

The only reason XP lasted so long was due to its install base. Win7 has nowhere near that so I expected a shorter support timeline. Win8 will be more popular with mobile devices and we all know how that works (cough Google, cough Apple).

And since Microsoft is now working on "Blue" http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/28/3693368/windows-blue-update-low-cost we probably can expect the same thing from them as well. OS's will last as long as the hardware they were designed for and no more. This is how the future of large corporate software is going and OEMs who build hardware are going to love it as it means frequent hardware changes. This all pushed by the fact that people are getting used to buying a new phone every 2-3 years so why not other personal computing systems.

Note that Photoshop 1.0 was a one-man app...and Knoll still works on Lightroom.

People today don't realize how mind-blowing Photoshop was back in the day. Nobody in real life did image editing - it was all airbrushing, paste-up, etc.

Anyway, good reading:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/13/3959868/photoshop-is-a-city-for-everyone-how-adobe-endlessly-rebuilds-its

Regardless of what this article said about "We are very sensitive to not disrupting how users use.." the sites that they purchased.

Are you saying Ouya and the Steam Box are just rumours? Because that clearly isn't true.

The fact that MSFT had to cut their Surface order in half [bgr.com] should be a surprise to nobody

I've seen you post this at least a dozen times. Every time you start a rant about Surface, you invariably bring up this unsubstantiated claim from unnamed Eastern component suppliers. After this "rumor" hit the web, Microsoft actually increased retail distribution, said they're increasing production, are increasing availability to more countries, and said they're expanding the product lineup. Together, these point to a completely different direction than your stale, 3 month old rumor.

You're starting to sound like a broken record.

Hell even with this, is it 23GB in base 2 like the OS, or is it base 10 like the manufacturers?

It's base 2.

all those people getting home and finding none of the Windows software they've accumalated for years will run on the damned thing, THAT is what is gonna make this into a megaflop.

All the software they've accumulated over the years WILL run on the Surface Pro. That's the entire point of this device. It runs full Windows 8 on an Intel Core i5. You don't seem to know much about this product you constantly are blasting. Even 23GB is enough for any application I've come across, but this can be expanded to 30+ GB by removing the recovery partition. This is the same you'd get with a Macbook Air at 64GB. You can even expand storage easily with an SD card.

Wow plus starcraft, 36gb. your point?

screw Slashdot...To The Verge!!!!