Essentially, its one corrupt group in conflict with another, while try to maintain public support.
And how is this different from when our mega corps compete with each other and try to cut off each other's air supply - by lowering prices or making certain things free?
I can't see anything bad coming out of this. I hope more countries do this such that the cost to monitor all packets becomes too expensive for the NSA. Then we might have a more free Internet.
tl;dr - the balkanization of spying is a good thing for Internet users.
Hari Seldon would be very disappointed in/. today.
Toché, but assuming my recollection isn't too foggy, I didn't feel that Asimov's stories really focus on the economist aspect of psychohistory. He tended to focus on historical events, and not from people attempting to profit directly from it (counterexample: Mule).
In our modern society Mr. Seldon would be made to understand that profit is the only meaningful objective (either by force or subversion).
I don't really feel like Metro has been forced down my throat. So what if that start menu looks a little different? If it bothers you so much then download something that will give you the normal start button back.
The fact that it doesn't bother you doesn't discount the fact that there are numerous folks who run into issues, and the unfamiliar.
When setting up (not installing) my father's new Win8 PC laptop, at some point it wasn't clear how to proceed - The setup was a dead end for him, and he was about to chuck his new laptop. I asked him to guide his pointer (using trackpad) to the edge, so he could pull up the charms bar. There were no cues, no guidance for someone not aware of the presence of corner activation. Then things commenced forward again. He felt stupid and I had to tell him that it wasn't his fault - it's just bad UI.
That's a simple example of how badly Microsoft handled this transition from Desktop to Metro as a default. Why did they completely throw away all of users' previous desktop experience (a great asset)? There are many other such stories out there and outlined in detail. Microsoft could have given a shit about users' experience, but failed to walk through a basic setup page.
I immediately thought of Sid Maier's Alpha Centauri and it's wonderful tech tree and prescient ideas [1] Note: while in SMAC, computing resources are used to solve big problems, mainly we're using them to run HFT schemes aiding the super-wealthy get even more wealthy.
but for people who are need to manage stuff like IP addresses and subnet masks directly I find Win7 actually harder to use.
If you really need to muck with network settings a lot why not use ipconfig on the command line - same interface, I believe, and scriptable (though cmd isn't as cool as bash, it's decently capable).
Further, isn't about the 34th time "XP end of life" has been announced? I was told they would NEVER be patching xp again, and I just GOT another patch last week.
End of XP support is announced for April 2014. And yes, it has been extended before. If Microsoft is serious this time or if they will give in with another support extension is anyone's guess.
Remember this is the company that outright declared war on it's own desktop monopoly to force Metro and the Microsoft App Store down the throats of any new PC buyer. I don't think there's any reason for them to delay at all - and a huge reason for them to go forward (ie, increased Win7 sales, or new PC purchases that come with Win8). I especially think that, governmental action aside, there's no "save the users" reason - even the potential 0-day apocalypse - that Microsoft would care about continuing life-support for XP.
The narrative around Apple has certainly shifted, and this is having a tremendous impact on how people view what Apple is doing. Especially hear on Slashdot, people seem anxious for any sign that Apple is failing.
Uh, you're just now tuning into the when will Apple fail meme that's about 20 years old? Apple has always been just about to fail, even with they had quarters with 100+% profit grown YoY.
Some think it's due to the new AppleTV [1] coming out (which may require more addressable memory >4GB - silly IMHO, PAE type extensions can make addressing more than 4GB easy for 32bit architectures - Intel did this in the 90s). That same article even mentioned the iWatch.
Another is saying it's performance related. And then there's the TFA which implies iOS/OSX synergy.
Personally, I think it's none of the above. It's just a marketing data point, and lays very important groundwork for future releases. Assuming like the difference between x86 and AMD64, there may be additional registers or other architectural performance improvements, it both makes current (new) hardware faster and more scaleable, and gives Apple options on where they can strike next (ie, nothing specific at all).
Maybe, given Phil Schiller's more macho, confrontational, attitude ("can't innovate my ass"), Apple just presented it to swing their big ones in the face of Samsung/Moto/Google/etc?
And at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 here today, the CEO of competitor Dell Computer added his voice to the chorus when asked what could be done to fix the Mac maker. His solution was a drastic one. "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives.
I'm sure Michael Dell really really cared about those thousands of Apple employees too. No one is shutting down, but as a high-profile public figure, he ought to have thought twice before he said shit that was destined come back to bite him.
It is my firm belief that humans should be taking vacations on Luna *now* and soon stepping foot on Mars. We could do it.
Why aren't we?
Fact is, it's not profitable. Don't read this as merely a critique of our current quarterly-results-focused society (that's another conversational tarpit I'm usually happy to discuss to death), but more as in, will it ever be profitable. With the discovery of H3 reserves in the Moon, you'd think we'd have all the need we could to send folks to stake claims. Realistically, the "in the black" date for such a mission looms decades or centuries in the future. Does any country or corporation have that kind of planning horizon? I challenge you. The US has abdicated any role of spending any money apparently (see sequester), and corporations are living quarter to quarter.
Face it, traditional exploration and exploitation of the unknown world really rested on the fact that it was generally considered habitable (after the "dragons be here" and flat-earthers were proved wrong) and most importantly, profitable - many natural resources and other humans to exploit and then fight over, and finally trade with.
What resources exist on Moon/Mars/A.belt that really get our conquistador types' blood flowing (and the purses loosened)? Will we as a society ever really mature to the point that even inter-planetary discovery and travel become feasible?
Who cares? You're never going to actually drive it that fast.
Don't get to California much, do you?
Seriously. I was doing about 85 in my Z3 on 101 in Mendocino County and got passed by a silver-blue Ferrari that had to be well over 120. Scared the shit out of me.
I've heard tales of sports car owners going over 150 on I-5. I have no idea when they do this, because every time I'm on there it would seem impossible. Maybe they do this further north, where the traffic is lighter.
I've done 140 easily in my old 4-banger Integra GSR racing another GSR 15 years ago... This was just north of santa clarita where it just starts to get really flat for hours.
Why is this news... is this our version of People magazine, where instead of hearing about all the details of the Kardashians' lives, we hear about every email or event that happens to Linus?
Did you just call Linus a Kardashian? This impacts timing on the next release of Linux, which impacts many companies and geeks. News for nerds doesnt' mean it doesn't involve actual people.
This is no different than our methods for torturing suspected terrorists by routing them to nations which are willing to do the dirty work for us. The NSA has determined they can tap all the calls and gather all the data but not search it without a warrant from the secret rubber stamp court. But all the data can (is?) passed to the Isreali's who can query it without even that oversight. Naturally, the NSA can ask them to do it a favor and query said data on their behalf without any warrant.
I thought we only did this information sharing (ie, cross-spying) with the UK. Israel makes a lot of sense given the close ties (most of US congress is under the thumb of one of the various lobbying groups and think-tanks that are influential in the Israeli security state as well - e.g.; AEI, AIPAC, Brookings institute, etc) [1].
No. C = China. This will be the first launch that focuses on China, and they could possibly sell a TD-LTE version of the 5C (not so useful elswhere) that could be significantly discounted appropriately for the region.
Hopefully user installed apps can't use that fingerprint scanner or I can see identity theft hit a new level. I've used the Atrix 4G and the fingerprint novelty is fleeting, not to mention fingerprints are insecure and at least in the Atrix 4G case frustrating to use because of misreads.
I sure as hell hope Apps can validate with a scan (or ensure that the keychain is unlocked based on a recent scan). I also hope it's something the user can turn off (for the paranoid iFanboys). The ability for an app to request an additional authentication (say for udpating account info) could mean the end of passwords (or at least not having to friggin log in every single time).
So, let me get this straight. Whenever a user gets arrested the police already take that user's fingerprint. Your phone is now locked with your fingerprint, so the police will no longer have to ask to unlock your phone? Merely by being arrested and owning an iPhone they could claim you have given them implied access to your phone.
Fingerprint scanning tech has come a long way in the past decade or so. Here's an excerpt of how the 5S fingerprint scanning would work [1]:
The new iPhone 5S uses the more sensitive capacitance method. Instead of bouncing light off the print to generate a binary representation, this method relies on an array of minuscule capaciative cells, each less than a finger ridge wide. These cells consist of two conductor plates separated by an insulating layer.
Put your finger on the capaciative scanner and the ridges will cause some plates to come into contact, thereby closing a circuit and generating current, while the cells under the ridges on your fingers remain separate. The system then interprets the voltages generated by each cell to determine which one is under a ridge and which is under a valley. By combining this data the scanner can generate an overall image of the print, much as an EO scanner would, but with a much higher degree of fidelity. Another advantage is that capacitance scanners require an actual fingerprint shape to work, not just a light-dark pattern, which makes them harder to spoof.
Doesn't sound to me like is easily spoof able with anything but a super-high-res fingerprint scanner and some way to 3D print fakes that both map the contours accurately enough while also providing a capacitive bridge.
tl;dr: the prints you left on the bus/glass/phone screen are nowhere near accurate enough to fool the 5S scanner.
What's the gain in living to be 150 if your brain stops functioning at any sort of useful level at age 70?
Who cares? (devil's advocate) Massive market potential for the pharma industry - esp if the 100+ crowd are relatively weathly or government is willing to pay medicare costs for them... easy to think like a post-human "health" industry CxO.
why would anyone let aged technologies play an important role in new devices?
Cost and capabilities. Spinny disks will be a lot cheaper, and hold a lot more data. If that's what you need, and aren't as concerned about shocks, durability, longevity, or access speed, then 'yay disks'.
Places where these might come in useful: Low end larger-screen digital media players. Kiosks (think of the tap-your-phone-number-at-checkout loyalty programs.) Smaller shelf signs and advertising in stores, where unit cost is the limiting factor.
Don't get too hung up in the idea that "tablet" means the same thing to everyone. It doesn't have to mean "usage model". Sometimes it can just mean "useful shape".
Why would a kiosk require a 5mm drive? Why not a bog-standard 7mm or 9mm enclosure? The major issue is whether modern touch-based OSs (read: mobile OSs) are comfortable with the seek times of a platter-based device. I'm still unclear as to why this work is even worth it unless you really want to trim costs... especially when you can just outfit a large tablet into a kiosk, install some kiosk-mode interface, and have done.
But even kiosks are taking a hit - the move now is to do what Square has done and transition to a using the tablet as your hardware - it gives you so much more freedom - no more power needed - theoretically, you could setup a payment stall in a flea market just as easily using battery power and cell network.
Why would anyone want to increase power and size restrictions for the mainstream use case, when everyone else is looking to replace PCs with tablets to increase mobility?
All in all, while a disk-based "tablet" might make sense to someone somewhere, it just doesn't make enough sense where I see profit coming from it (well, other than the disk makers).
Im not clear why theyre not selling. I dont particularly need one (the touchscreen would be of no use to me, and the form factor only marginally so), but my experience with them in the store was that the pros were solid. Certainly the folks at Penny Arcade gave a glowing review of the pro, and IIRC the newer comics are being done on it due to its excellent built in wacom.
Is it just the price point? $800 for an ultra-bookish laptop with an incredible touch screen seems pretty competitive to me....
Microsoft has fallen prey to it's own most powerful weapon - platform lockin - it's just this time the platform isn't owned by them. It's owned by Apple (and increasingly Google).
Are the Redmond guys as dumb as they look, or did they not get the idea that Windows8 and Metro was in a seriously hampered position without the PC software chain behind it? ANd then they go cripping their existing desktop monopoly (and the Surface Pro) by forcing Metro on those, too.
The way capitalism works is demand first, then supply shows up. It can't even be done the other way around. Strange that every business does it the opposite way: There was no demand for an iPhone... before it existed. There was no demand for the Tesla... before it actually existed.
This is so completely false as to be laughable. Apple surely fomented some of the demand prior to launch, but the demand was huge (in fact it probably surprised Apple how big the demand was - their success was in proper pre-cultivation, amazing execution, and lack of any worthwhile competitors for years).
Only the foolish look at things like the launch of any great product that (re)defines a new market as "there was no demand, then it was created". Customers have large untapped desires that require proper exploration, development, and exploitation techniques. Sometimes these desires can be cultivated, but the major wins hit on deep-seated desires that have been unmet by the current product offerings.
The trick is to be able to see these untapped reserves and map a path towards it.
A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs). MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.[1]
Features associated with early MOOCs, such as open licensing of content, open structure and learning goals, and connectivism may not be present in all MOOC projects,[2] in particular with the 'openness' of many MOOCs being called into question[3] raising issues around the 'reuse' and 'remixing' of resources.[4]
The three main present biggies are compared on this NYT article: Coursera, Edx and Udacity.
Why would holodecks be scarce if everything else can be magicked into existence?
And if holodecks offer perfect replication of the view, why not just live in one and have a grand mansion of a cabin programmed into it?
Engineering constraints force limited ship space. Also, although dilithium crystals and matter/anti-matter reactors could theoretically provide near-infinite power, the availability of given power over a an amount of time is scarce - if you're running 10x holodecks, maybe the sheilds or weapons (ie, phaser banks) can't run at full power (clearly outlined in every combat situation - not enough power to run both at full) Thus, holodeck time is scarce.
And adding to that, time is scarce - Humans do get older in the show, so we can derive the fact that they eventually die (though like most other sci-fi, lifespan may be greatly extended compared to our present "neo-feudalist" backwards age). Given that, for most individuals time is scarce.
If you have ship duties, this scarce time could be greatly curtailed so as to make it impossible to, for example, experience the holodeck every night.
So yes, an economy of sorts is required to determine who gets that scarce time... it would be interesting to see how that economy is portrayed. Many sci-fi books have good ideas of how this may play out (e.g.: Culture series, Void trilogy, etc), so it's not new.
And people mock Microsoft for not getting it right until the first Service Pack.
There's a huge difference. Apple usually releases a.1 release about 1-2 months after the.0, while Microsoft's SP1 usually takes a year (both Vista and Win7 followed this model).
It's like buying a console or new car after the initial rush, when early adopters can tell you what to avoid/look forward to. Sure, you don't get bragging rights, but it's not like waitiing a year and risking buying before next year's model.
Slashdot Mirror
Essentially, its one corrupt group in conflict with another, while try to maintain public support.
And how is this different from when our mega corps compete with each other and try to cut off each other's air supply - by lowering prices or making certain things free?
I can't see anything bad coming out of this. I hope more countries do this such that the cost to monitor all packets becomes too expensive for the NSA. Then we might have a more free Internet.
tl;dr - the balkanization of spying is a good thing for Internet users.
You thought of that, but not of Psychohistory?
Hari Seldon would be very disappointed in /. today.
Toché, but assuming my recollection isn't too foggy, I didn't feel that Asimov's stories really focus on the economist aspect of psychohistory. He tended to focus on historical events, and not from people attempting to profit directly from it (counterexample: Mule).
In our modern society Mr. Seldon would be made to understand that profit is the only meaningful objective (either by force or subversion).
I don't really feel like Metro has been forced down my throat. So what if that start menu looks a little different? If it bothers you so much then download something that will give you the normal start button back.
The fact that it doesn't bother you doesn't discount the fact that there are numerous folks who run into issues, and the unfamiliar.
When setting up (not installing) my father's new Win8 PC laptop, at some point it wasn't clear how to proceed - The setup was a dead end for him, and he was about to chuck his new laptop. I asked him to guide his pointer (using trackpad) to the edge, so he could pull up the charms bar. There were no cues, no guidance for someone not aware of the presence of corner activation. Then things commenced forward again. He felt stupid and I had to tell him that it wasn't his fault - it's just bad UI.
That's a simple example of how badly Microsoft handled this transition from Desktop to Metro as a default. Why did they completely throw away all of users' previous desktop experience (a great asset)? There are many other such stories out there and outlined in detail. Microsoft could have given a shit about users' experience, but failed to walk through a basic setup page.
I immediately thought of Sid Maier's Alpha Centauri and it's wonderful tech tree and prescient ideas [1]
Note: while in SMAC, computing resources are used to solve big problems, mainly we're using them to run HFT schemes aiding the super-wealthy get even more wealthy.
[1] http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Sentient_Econometrics
but for people who are need to manage stuff like IP addresses and subnet masks directly I find Win7 actually harder to use.
If you really need to muck with network settings a lot why not use ipconfig on the command line - same interface, I believe, and scriptable (though cmd isn't as cool as bash, it's decently capable).
Further, isn't about the 34th time "XP end of life" has been announced? I was told they would NEVER be patching xp again, and I just GOT another patch last week.
End of XP support is announced for April 2014. And yes, it has been extended before. If Microsoft is serious this time or if they will give in with another support extension is anyone's guess.
Remember this is the company that outright declared war on it's own desktop monopoly to force Metro and the Microsoft App Store down the throats of any new PC buyer. I don't think there's any reason for them to delay at all - and a huge reason for them to go forward (ie, increased Win7 sales, or new PC purchases that come with Win8). I especially think that, governmental action aside, there's no "save the users" reason - even the potential 0-day apocalypse - that Microsoft would care about continuing life-support for XP.
The narrative around Apple has certainly shifted, and this is having a tremendous impact on how people view what Apple is doing. Especially hear on Slashdot, people seem anxious for any sign that Apple is failing.
Uh, you're just now tuning into the when will Apple fail meme that's about 20 years old? Apple has always been just about to fail, even with they had quarters with 100+% profit grown YoY.
Some think it's due to the new AppleTV [1] coming out (which may require more addressable memory >4GB - silly IMHO, PAE type extensions can make addressing more than 4GB easy for 32bit architectures - Intel did this in the 90s). That same article even mentioned the iWatch.
Another is saying it's performance related. And then there's the TFA which implies iOS/OSX synergy.
Personally, I think it's none of the above. It's just a marketing data point, and lays very important groundwork for future releases. Assuming like the difference between x86 and AMD64, there may be additional registers or other architectural performance improvements, it both makes current (new) hardware faster and more scaleable, and gives Apple options on where they can strike next (ie, nothing specific at all).
Maybe, given Phil Schiller's more macho, confrontational, attitude ("can't innovate my ass"), Apple just presented it to swing their big ones in the face of Samsung/Moto/Google/etc?
I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders
Yeah! Those 109,000 employees can just go fuck themselves.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203937.html
And at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 here today, the CEO of competitor Dell Computer added his voice to the chorus when asked what could be done to fix the Mac maker. His solution was a drastic one.
"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives.
I'm sure Michael Dell really really cared about those thousands of Apple employees too. No one is shutting down, but as a high-profile public figure, he ought to have thought twice before he said shit that was destined come back to bite him.
It is my firm belief that humans should be taking vacations on Luna *now* and soon stepping foot on Mars. We could do it.
Why aren't we?
Fact is, it's not profitable. Don't read this as merely a critique of our current quarterly-results-focused society (that's another conversational tarpit I'm usually happy to discuss to death), but more as in, will it ever be profitable. With the discovery of H3 reserves in the Moon, you'd think we'd have all the need we could to send folks to stake claims. Realistically, the "in the black" date for such a mission looms decades or centuries in the future. Does any country or corporation have that kind of planning horizon? I challenge you. The US has abdicated any role of spending any money apparently (see sequester), and corporations are living quarter to quarter.
Face it, traditional exploration and exploitation of the unknown world really rested on the fact that it was generally considered habitable (after the "dragons be here" and flat-earthers were proved wrong) and most importantly, profitable - many natural resources and other humans to exploit and then fight over, and finally trade with.
What resources exist on Moon/Mars/A.belt that really get our conquistador types' blood flowing (and the purses loosened)? Will we as a society ever really mature to the point that even inter-planetary discovery and travel become feasible?
Who cares? You're never going to actually drive it that fast.
Don't get to California much, do you?
Seriously. I was doing about 85 in my Z3 on 101 in Mendocino County and got passed by a silver-blue Ferrari that had to be well over 120. Scared the shit out of me.
I've heard tales of sports car owners going over 150 on I-5. I have no idea when they do this, because every time I'm on there it would seem impossible. Maybe they do this further north, where the traffic is lighter.
I've done 140 easily in my old 4-banger Integra GSR racing another GSR 15 years ago... This was just north of santa clarita where it just starts to get really flat for hours.
Why is this news... is this our version of People magazine, where instead of hearing about all the details of the Kardashians' lives, we hear about every email or event that happens to Linus?
Did you just call Linus a Kardashian? This impacts timing on the next release of Linux, which impacts many companies and geeks. News for nerds doesnt' mean it doesn't involve actual people.
This is no different than our methods for torturing suspected terrorists by routing them to nations which are willing to do the dirty work for us. The NSA has determined they can tap all the calls and gather all the data but not search it without a warrant from the secret rubber stamp court. But all the data can (is?) passed to the Isreali's who can query it without even that oversight. Naturally, the NSA can ask them to do it a favor and query said data on their behalf without any warrant.
I thought we only did this information sharing (ie, cross-spying) with the UK. Israel makes a lot of sense given the close ties (most of US congress is under the thumb of one of the various lobbying groups and think-tanks that are influential in the Israeli security state as well - e.g.; AEI, AIPAC, Brookings institute, etc) [1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_States
Does the C stand for cheap?
No. C = China. This will be the first launch that focuses on China, and they could possibly sell a TD-LTE version of the 5C (not so useful elswhere) that could be significantly discounted appropriately for the region.
Hopefully user installed apps can't use that fingerprint scanner or I can see identity theft hit a new level.
I've used the Atrix 4G and the fingerprint novelty is fleeting, not to mention fingerprints are insecure and at least in the Atrix 4G case frustrating to use because of misreads.
I sure as hell hope Apps can validate with a scan (or ensure that the keychain is unlocked based on a recent scan). I also hope it's something the user can turn off (for the paranoid iFanboys). The ability for an app to request an additional authentication (say for udpating account info) could mean the end of passwords (or at least not having to friggin log in every single time).
Sorry, link here:
[1] http://gizmodo.com/how-the-iphone-5ss-fingerprint-scanner-works-and-what-1265703794
So, let me get this straight. Whenever a user gets arrested the police already take that user's fingerprint. Your phone is now locked with your fingerprint, so the police will no longer have to ask to unlock your phone? Merely by being arrested and owning an iPhone they could claim you have given them implied access to your phone.
Fingerprint scanning tech has come a long way in the past decade or so. Here's an excerpt of how the 5S fingerprint scanning would work [1]:
The new iPhone 5S uses the more sensitive capacitance method. Instead of bouncing light off the print to generate a binary representation, this method relies on an array of minuscule capaciative cells, each less than a finger ridge wide. These cells consist of two conductor plates separated by an insulating layer.
Put your finger on the capaciative scanner and the ridges will cause some plates to come into contact, thereby closing a circuit and generating current, while the cells under the ridges on your fingers remain separate. The system then interprets the voltages generated by each cell to determine which one is under a ridge and which is under a valley. By combining this data the scanner can generate an overall image of the print, much as an EO scanner would, but with a much higher degree of fidelity. Another advantage is that capacitance scanners require an actual fingerprint shape to work, not just a light-dark pattern, which makes them harder to spoof.
Doesn't sound to me like is easily spoof able with anything but a super-high-res fingerprint scanner and some way to 3D print fakes that both map the contours accurately enough while also providing a capacitive bridge.
tl;dr: the prints you left on the bus/glass/phone screen are nowhere near accurate enough to fool the 5S scanner.
What's the gain in living to be 150 if your brain stops functioning at any sort of useful level at age 70?
Who cares? (devil's advocate) Massive market potential for the pharma industry - esp if the 100+ crowd are relatively weathly or government is willing to pay medicare costs for them... easy to think like a post-human "health" industry CxO.
why would anyone let aged technologies play an important role in new devices?
Cost and capabilities. Spinny disks will be a lot cheaper, and hold a lot more data. If that's what you need, and aren't as concerned about shocks, durability, longevity, or access speed, then 'yay disks'.
Places where these might come in useful: Low end larger-screen digital media players. Kiosks (think of the tap-your-phone-number-at-checkout loyalty programs.) Smaller shelf signs and advertising in stores, where unit cost is the limiting factor.
Don't get too hung up in the idea that "tablet" means the same thing to everyone. It doesn't have to mean "usage model". Sometimes it can just mean "useful shape".
Why would a kiosk require a 5mm drive? Why not a bog-standard 7mm or 9mm enclosure? The major issue is whether modern touch-based OSs (read: mobile OSs) are comfortable with the seek times of a platter-based device. I'm still unclear as to why this work is even worth it unless you really want to trim costs... especially when you can just outfit a large tablet into a kiosk, install some kiosk-mode interface, and have done.
But even kiosks are taking a hit - the move now is to do what Square has done and transition to a using the tablet as your hardware - it gives you so much more freedom - no more power needed - theoretically, you could setup a payment stall in a flea market just as easily using battery power and cell network.
Why would anyone want to increase power and size restrictions for the mainstream use case, when everyone else is looking to replace PCs with tablets to increase mobility?
All in all, while a disk-based "tablet" might make sense to someone somewhere, it just doesn't make enough sense where I see profit coming from it (well, other than the disk makers).
Im not clear why theyre not selling. I dont particularly need one (the touchscreen would be of no use to me, and the form factor only marginally so), but my experience with them in the store was that the pros were solid. Certainly the folks at Penny Arcade gave a glowing review of the pro, and IIRC the newer comics are being done on it due to its excellent built in wacom.
Is it just the price point? $800 for an ultra-bookish laptop with an incredible touch screen seems pretty competitive to me....
Microsoft has fallen prey to it's own most powerful weapon - platform lockin - it's just this time the platform isn't owned by them. It's owned by Apple (and increasingly Google).
Are the Redmond guys as dumb as they look, or did they not get the idea that Windows8 and Metro was in a seriously hampered position without the PC software chain behind it? ANd then they go cripping their existing desktop monopoly (and the Surface Pro) by forcing Metro on those, too.
The hubris smells from hundreds of miles away.
What sort of watch only runs for 10 hours and when you glance at it doesn't show the time till you activate it?
Samsung copied the iPod Nano from 2 years ago... though I heard the life on that was a bit more than 10 hrs.
The way capitalism works is demand first, then supply shows up. It can't even be done the other way around. ... before it existed. ... before it actually existed.
Strange that every business does it the opposite way:
There was no demand for an iPhone
There was no demand for the Tesla
This is so completely false as to be laughable. Apple surely fomented some of the demand prior to launch, but the demand was huge (in fact it probably surprised Apple how big the demand was - their success was in proper pre-cultivation, amazing execution, and lack of any worthwhile competitors for years).
Only the foolish look at things like the launch of any great product that (re)defines a new market as "there was no demand, then it was created". Customers have large untapped desires that require proper exploration, development, and exploitation techniques. Sometimes these desires can be cultivated, but the major wins hit on deep-seated desires that have been unmet by the current product offerings.
The trick is to be able to see these untapped reserves and map a path towards it.
Das Wiki has it here:
A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs). MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.[1]
Features associated with early MOOCs, such as open licensing of content, open structure and learning goals, and connectivism may not be present in all MOOC projects,[2] in particular with the 'openness' of many MOOCs being called into question[3] raising issues around the 'reuse' and 'remixing' of resources.[4]
The three main present biggies are compared on this NYT article: Coursera, Edx and Udacity.
Why would holodecks be scarce if everything else can be magicked into existence?
And if holodecks offer perfect replication of the view, why not just live in one and have a grand mansion of a cabin programmed into it?
Engineering constraints force limited ship space. Also, although dilithium crystals and matter/anti-matter reactors could theoretically provide near-infinite power, the availability of given power over a an amount of time is scarce - if you're running 10x holodecks, maybe the sheilds or weapons (ie, phaser banks) can't run at full power (clearly outlined in every combat situation - not enough power to run both at full) Thus, holodeck time is scarce.
And adding to that, time is scarce - Humans do get older in the show, so we can derive the fact that they eventually die (though like most other sci-fi, lifespan may be greatly extended compared to our present "neo-feudalist" backwards age). Given that, for most individuals time is scarce.
If you have ship duties, this scarce time could be greatly curtailed so as to make it impossible to, for example, experience the holodeck every night.
So yes, an economy of sorts is required to determine who gets that scarce time... it would be interesting to see how that economy is portrayed. Many sci-fi books have good ideas of how this may play out (e.g.: Culture series, Void trilogy, etc), so it's not new.
And people mock Microsoft for not getting it right until the first Service Pack.
There's a huge difference. Apple usually releases a .1 release about 1-2 months after the .0, while Microsoft's SP1 usually takes a year (both Vista and Win7 followed this model).
It's like buying a console or new car after the initial rush, when early adopters can tell you what to avoid/look forward to. Sure, you don't get bragging rights, but it's not like waitiing a year and risking buying before next year's model.