The Lync thing I'm talking about it only for online meetings. It's a part of Lync implemented as a web app and for some reason if you aren't on Windows it's your only choice if you want to see what other people are presenting. The place I work at doesn't actually use Lync for generic telephony. (Although they do have some form of half-assed integration where someone calling my office phone will, in fact, cause a Lync desktop app notification to appear. I just can't answer the call using Lync because our VoIP system isn't actually Lync.)
I think you're talking about Lync in general (that is, the desktop chat/VoIP app). I'm talking about the new Lync webapp that's used for Lync conferencing. For some reason I can't figure out, at least on Mac OS X (which is what my work laptop is), the Lync webapp refuses to use anything other than the internal speaker/mic or the speaker/mic port on the side. It doesn't matter what audio device you have set up in Settings, it just ignores it and uses either the internal speaker/mic or the ports, although you can select which of the two to use. Back when IT still supported the old Lync desktop app, that supported any audio device I threw at it. The new Lync webapp that they're having everyone use in place of the Lync desktop app, on the other hand, does not.
I have no clue how relevant the Lync webapp is to the new Skype browser thing the story is referring to. I can only hope it turns out to be completely unrelated given how poorly the webapp works. But it's potentially relevant given that Skype and Lync are now operated by the same team and they're basically discontinuing Lync in favor of Skype. (Unless it turns out to just be a branding thing, and Skype for Business will be an entirely separate code base from Skype. Microsoft hasn't exactly been clear on the future direction of Lync.)
Oh, goodie, I can only hope this new browser-based version of Skype works as well as the new browser-based version of Lync does, especially with Microsoft rebranding Lync as Skype for Business.
I remember when I used to be able to use my USB headset with Lync, prior to corporate moving to the new browser-based version of Lync. Now I can only use the built-in speakers and microphone because Lync manages to completely ignore the global sound settings somehow! I sure hope they manage to bring this feature to the new browser version of Skype.
Granted, this was still a step up from the Lync client which routinely crashed if the network hiccuped in any way, but still. I can only hope the Skype team is taking over the Lync team and not the other way around.
I will give Lync some credit. It makes a great excuse for blowing off a meeting. "Oh, sorry, I tried to attend your meeting, but Lync blew up." "Oh, yeah, it does that to me all the time. We'll try again tomorrow."
I love how the Democratic Party invention of free speech zones somehow became a "Dubya" thing. They may have only become widely covered starting in 2000, but they were originally an invention of the DNC to keep pro-life protestors away from their 1988 convention.
Both parties have been using them since the 2004 elections, so it's not like you can lay the blame solely on the Republicans either. Both parties do it.
You can always tell when a movie is going to be - uh, "good" - when they refuse to show it to reviewers prior to it launching in theaters. Likewise, when a game has reviews coming out before it launches, you usually know it's going to be a good game.
Of course, the big problem with games is that for some crazy reason publishers rely on "preorders" to establish launch day sales. You get things like 10% off if you "preorder" the game instead of waiting for launch day, or you get special DLC that's only available if you preorder. I don't understand why publishers are so interested in preorders. But it's yet another way of trying to get people to purchase a product before they can review it.
Now if you don't mind, I need to stop my rant about preorders so I can go back another video game Kickstarter.
Speaking as a Massachusetts resident, I can tell you that Romneycare was in no way a Republican idea. At the time, the Democratic-controlled state legislative branch was essentially trying to take over healthcare via heavy regulation. This wouldn't be the first time: Massachusetts heavily regulates auto insurance and as such had some of the highest auto insurance rates in the nation. We've since deregulated auto insurance to some degree which has allowed some additional competition and a general lowering of rates. You're still required to buy car insurance, though.
Romney basically negotiated Romneycare in an attempt to prevent the same disaster that was Massachusetts auto insurance from being repeated in the Massachusetts health industry. He didn't get everything he wanted, quite a lot of "Romneycare" was pushed through thanks to the Democratic-controlled legislature.
And it didn't work. People lost jobs. (I personally know people who were forced out of the state due to Romneycare when their job evaporated because their employers couldn't afford to offer insurance.) Emergency room visits went up and doctor visits went down.
By the time Obamacare became law, the law was already a miserable failure here, so - uh, yeah. Enjoy your known-failed "conservative" approach to health care, I guess.
The debugger tab informed me the library was "blackboxed" and at that point I figured it was best to just give up and try a different browser. Chrome had no problem getting the error message and console message in the right order and its error message was more useful anyway.
I've had issues with Firefox's developer tools before. I remember managing to crash the browser by trying to inspect a JSON object that turned out to contain some huge number of entries. The DOM Inspector is also generally really slow and freezes the browser if you try to inspect some deeply nested node. Chrome's developer tools are, generally, better than Firefox's. The only reason I use Firefox these days is because NoScript is still better than anything I'm aware of for Chrome or, really, any other browser.
It's kind of amusing this should show up today, the same day I discovered a somewhat amusing little issue with the Firefox developer tools:
The "JavaScript error" developer console log messages (e.g., JavaScript errors) are not necessarily displayed in the same order that "JavaScript console" messages (i.e., console.log) are generated.
Meaning that if you're trying to track down what's generating a JavaScript message in some library you're calling (that is, a warning because the library "helpfully" catches the error for you and just does nothing), you: 1) can't get a stack trace of where that message was generated and 2) can't rely on "console.log" statements to help you narrow it down since "console.log" messages can be out of order of any other message type. I have no idea why this would be the case since JavaScript execution is explicitly single-threaded and having messages generated by a single thread appear out-of-order makes absolutely no sense, but - well, Firefox managed it.
I did, eventually, figure out a solution to my problem: I used Chrome instead. Not only did my app run twice as fast, Chrome messages are in order and included the property being read off the null object. (Allowing me to track down how the library managed to find a null off a non-null argument.)
So I'm glad Firefox is trying to make a "developer-centric browser," now if only their current browser tools weren't terrible.
As far as I'm aware, the "Sport" version is lighter and stronger than the regular version but that's the extent of the differences. The real answer is "who even knows" since it isn't released yet.
GPS not being in the phone is from the Watch technology page where they explicitly state "Apple Watch uses the GPS and Wiâ'Fi in your iPhone to help measure the distance you travel during activities that canâ(TM)t be measured in steps, such as cycling." As far as I know, the only page that details the difference between the models is the overview page.
Exactly what happens when the watch loses contact with the phone is still anyone's guess.
As I understand it, the issue is this. I make a Twitter account. (I dunno why I want to call them "feeds.") I mark it private, which means that only people I allow to follow me can see it. Then, someone else downloads this app which then shares my private Twitter feed to the app makers without my permission.
So let's say Alice makes a Twitter account, and marks it private. She allows Bob to follow her. Bob then downloads this app, which can then see her tweets as she's allowed Bob to see them. Alice is willing to let Bob read her tweets but doesn't want them shared with other people, and Bob presumably doesn't realize he's violating her privacy by downloading the app.
At least, that's my understanding of what people are upset about.
I'm pretty sure that is Nerval's Lobster's job. I really wish Slashdot would at least mention that the link is to a news site run by their parent company. I mean, they always used to when linking to things on SourceForge or ThinkGeek.
Sure, once you've been around here long enough, you'll learn that Nerval's Lobster == Dice news story and Bennett Haselton == verbal diarrhea, but it would be nice if the editors would at least pretend at being professional.
Running, for one. Not having to carry a phone is useful. Yes, there are hundreds of fitness trackers. Why not a multi-purpose tracker that also lets me reply to the wife?
Unfortunately as other people have pointed out, you do need to carry the phone. Which has already killed the Apple Watch for one runner I know. She was really excited about the idea of being able to leave the phone at home while running while still having access to things like a GPS logger and her calendar.
Then I pointed out that would only work if she only ran in like a 40 foot bubble around her phone. (And that we don't know what happens without the phone and what the range really is.) The discovery that the watch doesn't have a GPS in it basically killed her interest in it. If she has to carry the phone anyway, why bother with the watch?
But you're right, if the Apple Watch was basically a tiny phone you could use from your wrist without requiring you to also be carrying the phone, that could be a great product for runners. Hell, if it had a GPS and just synced via your phone while it was in range, that would probably be "good enough" for a ton of runners.
As it is, its dependence on the iPhone for GPS and the fact that we don't know exactly how well it degrades without the phone basically kills its usefulness for runners.
And, of course, for those of us who don't go running and instead spend all our time sitting on our fat asses, I still haven't figured out a reason why we'd want an Apple Watch.
Back when the gaming journalism was run by the console manufacturers. Back then, they weren't even pretending not to be advertisers for the publishers!:)
It sounds to me like he was watching this documentary I recently saw on TV, Person of Interest, which is about the dangers of AI run wild...
(I think the character who created the AI on Person of Interest has said something almost identical to Elon Musk's quote from the summary. The latest episode has a throw-away line about how many iterations it took before his AI stopped trying to kill him.)
Honestly, that's because that's what it is. It makes a much better competitor to the MacBook Air than the iPad. (The price point doesn't help it either.) It makes a fairly lousy tablet, and it suffers from the general Windows 8-ism of "throw absolutely everything we can think of into it at once."
It's a multi-touch tablet. With an optional-but-not-really keyboard-touchpad cover. And a front and rear camera. And a pen that doesn't attach anywhere. (Fun game: in Surface ads, watch for them to produce and disappear the pen. It comes out of nowhere and disappears to nowhere.)
It runs a laptop OS (and runs it well, mind you) and therefore picks up some annoying laptop-isms: by default, unlocking requires your Windows password. (You can, thankfully, enable a PIN to unlock.) Like a laptop, it enters hibernation mode and then requires a couple of seconds to wake up if you leave it alone long enough. It also takes a couple of seconds to wake up from sleep (not hibernation).
As a small form-factor laptop, it works quite well. As a tablet - well, Windows 8.1 turns out to make a lousy tablet OS.
Although I find that using touch on desktop apps works surprisingly well. The handwriting support is also fairly good and you can get away with using just the pen in a surprising number of desktop apps.
It honestly isn't a bad whatever it is. It's just that it isn't really a good tablet.
(Disclaimer: I own a Surface Pro 3. They're probably right to compare it to the MacBook Air and not the iPad. I know everyone hates the "tablet UI" on the desktop but even with the Surface Pro 3 their tablet UI is still pretty terrible. I pretty much never leave the desktop. On my tablet. The few tablet-style apps I've tried for the Surface has all been terrible. It really does make a descent small Windows laptop, though!)
How does that work when you're off the LTE network, though? LTE coverage may be generally "OK" where I live near a major city, but I know that my brother who uses Verizon frequently finds himself on whatever Verizon calls their CDMA data service when using data. (I think it's just "3G" but I don't remember.) Do you need a special CDMA card too or does it all use the same SIM card? I'm assuming it all uses the same SIM card? Or do the new iPads just not support CDMA at all?
I'm genuinely curious, I have no idea how the CDMA to LTE transition works. Not that it really matters to me since I'm currently on AT&T, but my family all uses Verizon and I have no clue what's going on with Verizon's transition to LTE.
Well, yes, but generally you buy the SIM through them and not through Apple.
Apparently with the new iPads one of the new features is that they come with "Apple SIMs" that instead of being a SIM provided by the cell provider are a SIM Apple provides. (Unless you're using it with Verizon, in which case you have to use a Verizon SIM. Except I thought Verizon and Sprint used CDMA which required something other than a SIM. Or maybe 4G LTE changes that. I haven't a clue how it works, other than for the longest time in the US if you wanted to use the same phone and change providers you could only do that between AT&T and T-Mobile and then even then you often couldn't because they didn't use the same bands.)
So, er, anyway. It's a story because it means that AT&T and Verizon are basically preventing one of the major new features on the iPad from working, which ultimately doesn't really matter because for the most part you can't just buy data a-la-cart in the US anyway so it's not like you're likely to be switching providers enough to make being able to keep the SIM useful.
Wait, really? When I took a trip to Australia, I wound up getting a Japanese car from the car rental and was constantly turning on the windshield wipers when trying to signal.
Driving on the left? No big deal. Remembering where the turn signals were? Took the entire trip.
Of course, when I got back to the US and into my own (Japanese) car, the first thing I did after starting it was turn on the windshield wipers to indicate I was turning left out of my parking spot.
People are working on a modular cell phone. Not open hardware, necessarily, but something which you can upgrade piecemeal. I don't think anyone's managed to create a real marketable solution, but - well, there are companies working on it.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell is this, then?
The Lync thing I'm talking about it only for online meetings. It's a part of Lync implemented as a web app and for some reason if you aren't on Windows it's your only choice if you want to see what other people are presenting. The place I work at doesn't actually use Lync for generic telephony. (Although they do have some form of half-assed integration where someone calling my office phone will, in fact, cause a Lync desktop app notification to appear. I just can't answer the call using Lync because our VoIP system isn't actually Lync.)
I think you're talking about Lync in general (that is, the desktop chat/VoIP app). I'm talking about the new Lync webapp that's used for Lync conferencing. For some reason I can't figure out, at least on Mac OS X (which is what my work laptop is), the Lync webapp refuses to use anything other than the internal speaker/mic or the speaker/mic port on the side. It doesn't matter what audio device you have set up in Settings, it just ignores it and uses either the internal speaker/mic or the ports, although you can select which of the two to use. Back when IT still supported the old Lync desktop app, that supported any audio device I threw at it. The new Lync webapp that they're having everyone use in place of the Lync desktop app, on the other hand, does not.
I have no clue how relevant the Lync webapp is to the new Skype browser thing the story is referring to. I can only hope it turns out to be completely unrelated given how poorly the webapp works. But it's potentially relevant given that Skype and Lync are now operated by the same team and they're basically discontinuing Lync in favor of Skype. (Unless it turns out to just be a branding thing, and Skype for Business will be an entirely separate code base from Skype. Microsoft hasn't exactly been clear on the future direction of Lync.)
Oh, goodie, I can only hope this new browser-based version of Skype works as well as the new browser-based version of Lync does, especially with Microsoft rebranding Lync as Skype for Business.
I remember when I used to be able to use my USB headset with Lync, prior to corporate moving to the new browser-based version of Lync. Now I can only use the built-in speakers and microphone because Lync manages to completely ignore the global sound settings somehow! I sure hope they manage to bring this feature to the new browser version of Skype.
Granted, this was still a step up from the Lync client which routinely crashed if the network hiccuped in any way, but still. I can only hope the Skype team is taking over the Lync team and not the other way around.
I will give Lync some credit. It makes a great excuse for blowing off a meeting. "Oh, sorry, I tried to attend your meeting, but Lync blew up." "Oh, yeah, it does that to me all the time. We'll try again tomorrow."
I love how the Democratic Party invention of free speech zones somehow became a "Dubya" thing. They may have only become widely covered starting in 2000, but they were originally an invention of the DNC to keep pro-life protestors away from their 1988 convention.
Both parties have been using them since the 2004 elections, so it's not like you can lay the blame solely on the Republicans either. Both parties do it.
You can always tell when a movie is going to be - uh, "good" - when they refuse to show it to reviewers prior to it launching in theaters. Likewise, when a game has reviews coming out before it launches, you usually know it's going to be a good game.
Of course, the big problem with games is that for some crazy reason publishers rely on "preorders" to establish launch day sales. You get things like 10% off if you "preorder" the game instead of waiting for launch day, or you get special DLC that's only available if you preorder. I don't understand why publishers are so interested in preorders. But it's yet another way of trying to get people to purchase a product before they can review it.
Now if you don't mind, I need to stop my rant about preorders so I can go back another video game Kickstarter.
Speaking as a Massachusetts resident, I can tell you that Romneycare was in no way a Republican idea. At the time, the Democratic-controlled state legislative branch was essentially trying to take over healthcare via heavy regulation. This wouldn't be the first time: Massachusetts heavily regulates auto insurance and as such had some of the highest auto insurance rates in the nation. We've since deregulated auto insurance to some degree which has allowed some additional competition and a general lowering of rates. You're still required to buy car insurance, though.
Romney basically negotiated Romneycare in an attempt to prevent the same disaster that was Massachusetts auto insurance from being repeated in the Massachusetts health industry. He didn't get everything he wanted, quite a lot of "Romneycare" was pushed through thanks to the Democratic-controlled legislature.
And it didn't work. People lost jobs. (I personally know people who were forced out of the state due to Romneycare when their job evaporated because their employers couldn't afford to offer insurance.) Emergency room visits went up and doctor visits went down.
By the time Obamacare became law, the law was already a miserable failure here, so - uh, yeah. Enjoy your known-failed "conservative" approach to health care, I guess.
If all Apple adverts are set to 9:42, explain this one: "Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 06, 2014 @08:57AM.
You live in [counts on fingers]... North Korea?
The debugger tab informed me the library was "blackboxed" and at that point I figured it was best to just give up and try a different browser. Chrome had no problem getting the error message and console message in the right order and its error message was more useful anyway.
I've had issues with Firefox's developer tools before. I remember managing to crash the browser by trying to inspect a JSON object that turned out to contain some huge number of entries. The DOM Inspector is also generally really slow and freezes the browser if you try to inspect some deeply nested node. Chrome's developer tools are, generally, better than Firefox's. The only reason I use Firefox these days is because NoScript is still better than anything I'm aware of for Chrome or, really, any other browser.
It's kind of amusing this should show up today, the same day I discovered a somewhat amusing little issue with the Firefox developer tools:
The "JavaScript error" developer console log messages (e.g., JavaScript errors) are not necessarily displayed in the same order that "JavaScript console" messages (i.e., console.log) are generated.
Meaning that if you're trying to track down what's generating a JavaScript message in some library you're calling (that is, a warning because the library "helpfully" catches the error for you and just does nothing), you: 1) can't get a stack trace of where that message was generated and 2) can't rely on "console.log" statements to help you narrow it down since "console.log" messages can be out of order of any other message type. I have no idea why this would be the case since JavaScript execution is explicitly single-threaded and having messages generated by a single thread appear out-of-order makes absolutely no sense, but - well, Firefox managed it.
I did, eventually, figure out a solution to my problem: I used Chrome instead. Not only did my app run twice as fast, Chrome messages are in order and included the property being read off the null object. (Allowing me to track down how the library managed to find a null off a non-null argument.)
So I'm glad Firefox is trying to make a "developer-centric browser," now if only their current browser tools weren't terrible.
As far as I'm aware, the "Sport" version is lighter and stronger than the regular version but that's the extent of the differences. The real answer is "who even knows" since it isn't released yet.
GPS not being in the phone is from the Watch technology page where they explicitly state "Apple Watch uses the GPS and Wiâ'Fi in your iPhone to help measure the distance you travel during activities that canâ(TM)t be measured in steps, such as cycling." As far as I know, the only page that details the difference between the models is the overview page.
Exactly what happens when the watch loses contact with the phone is still anyone's guess.
As I understand it, the issue is this. I make a Twitter account. (I dunno why I want to call them "feeds.") I mark it private, which means that only people I allow to follow me can see it. Then, someone else downloads this app which then shares my private Twitter feed to the app makers without my permission.
So let's say Alice makes a Twitter account, and marks it private. She allows Bob to follow her. Bob then downloads this app, which can then see her tweets as she's allowed Bob to see them. Alice is willing to let Bob read her tweets but doesn't want them shared with other people, and Bob presumably doesn't realize he's violating her privacy by downloading the app.
At least, that's my understanding of what people are upset about.
Yes, you can. You can create a Twitter feed and then set it up so that only people you've explicitly allowed to follow you can see your Tweets.
I'm pretty sure that is Nerval's Lobster's job. I really wish Slashdot would at least mention that the link is to a news site run by their parent company. I mean, they always used to when linking to things on SourceForge or ThinkGeek.
Sure, once you've been around here long enough, you'll learn that Nerval's Lobster == Dice news story and Bennett Haselton == verbal diarrhea, but it would be nice if the editors would at least pretend at being professional.
Running, for one. Not having to carry a phone is useful. Yes, there are hundreds of fitness trackers. Why not a multi-purpose tracker that also lets me reply to the wife?
Unfortunately as other people have pointed out, you do need to carry the phone. Which has already killed the Apple Watch for one runner I know. She was really excited about the idea of being able to leave the phone at home while running while still having access to things like a GPS logger and her calendar.
Then I pointed out that would only work if she only ran in like a 40 foot bubble around her phone. (And that we don't know what happens without the phone and what the range really is.) The discovery that the watch doesn't have a GPS in it basically killed her interest in it. If she has to carry the phone anyway, why bother with the watch?
But you're right, if the Apple Watch was basically a tiny phone you could use from your wrist without requiring you to also be carrying the phone, that could be a great product for runners. Hell, if it had a GPS and just synced via your phone while it was in range, that would probably be "good enough" for a ton of runners.
As it is, its dependence on the iPhone for GPS and the fact that we don't know exactly how well it degrades without the phone basically kills its usefulness for runners.
And, of course, for those of us who don't go running and instead spend all our time sitting on our fat asses, I still haven't figured out a reason why we'd want an Apple Watch.
Back when the gaming journalism was run by the console manufacturers. Back then, they weren't even pretending not to be advertisers for the publishers! :)
Someone has to design those nice icons, decide how things should slide around on the screen, even heaven forbid do some UX planning.
[FUCK BETA]
So... getting women out of tech is a good thing?
(Joking. Only joking.)
It sounds to me like he was watching this documentary I recently saw on TV, Person of Interest, which is about the dangers of AI run wild...
(I think the character who created the AI on Person of Interest has said something almost identical to Elon Musk's quote from the summary. The latest episode has a throw-away line about how many iterations it took before his AI stopped trying to kill him.)
Since you mention it, if you search for "Doom", you get (amongst others):
Doom (Video game)
Developers: GT Interactive Software
Designers: Tom Hall, Shawn Green, John Romero
Doom (Video game)
Developer: id Software
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
So I guess John Carmack never did exist.
And, yes, "Doom (Video game)" appears twice. The second one is actually "Doom 4."
Honestly, that's because that's what it is. It makes a much better competitor to the MacBook Air than the iPad. (The price point doesn't help it either.) It makes a fairly lousy tablet, and it suffers from the general Windows 8-ism of "throw absolutely everything we can think of into it at once."
It's a multi-touch tablet. With an optional-but-not-really keyboard-touchpad cover. And a front and rear camera. And a pen that doesn't attach anywhere. (Fun game: in Surface ads, watch for them to produce and disappear the pen. It comes out of nowhere and disappears to nowhere.)
It runs a laptop OS (and runs it well, mind you) and therefore picks up some annoying laptop-isms: by default, unlocking requires your Windows password. (You can, thankfully, enable a PIN to unlock.) Like a laptop, it enters hibernation mode and then requires a couple of seconds to wake up if you leave it alone long enough. It also takes a couple of seconds to wake up from sleep (not hibernation).
As a small form-factor laptop, it works quite well. As a tablet - well, Windows 8.1 turns out to make a lousy tablet OS.
Although I find that using touch on desktop apps works surprisingly well. The handwriting support is also fairly good and you can get away with using just the pen in a surprising number of desktop apps.
It honestly isn't a bad whatever it is. It's just that it isn't really a good tablet.
I'm not sure the Surface Pro line is really competing with the iPad, though. I mean, according to Microsoft themselves, a Surface Pro 3 is equivalent to a MacBook Air.
(Disclaimer: I own a Surface Pro 3. They're probably right to compare it to the MacBook Air and not the iPad. I know everyone hates the "tablet UI" on the desktop but even with the Surface Pro 3 their tablet UI is still pretty terrible. I pretty much never leave the desktop. On my tablet. The few tablet-style apps I've tried for the Surface has all been terrible. It really does make a descent small Windows laptop, though!)
How does that work when you're off the LTE network, though? LTE coverage may be generally "OK" where I live near a major city, but I know that my brother who uses Verizon frequently finds himself on whatever Verizon calls their CDMA data service when using data. (I think it's just "3G" but I don't remember.) Do you need a special CDMA card too or does it all use the same SIM card? I'm assuming it all uses the same SIM card? Or do the new iPads just not support CDMA at all?
I'm genuinely curious, I have no idea how the CDMA to LTE transition works. Not that it really matters to me since I'm currently on AT&T, but my family all uses Verizon and I have no clue what's going on with Verizon's transition to LTE.
Well, yes, but generally you buy the SIM through them and not through Apple.
Apparently with the new iPads one of the new features is that they come with "Apple SIMs" that instead of being a SIM provided by the cell provider are a SIM Apple provides. (Unless you're using it with Verizon, in which case you have to use a Verizon SIM. Except I thought Verizon and Sprint used CDMA which required something other than a SIM. Or maybe 4G LTE changes that. I haven't a clue how it works, other than for the longest time in the US if you wanted to use the same phone and change providers you could only do that between AT&T and T-Mobile and then even then you often couldn't because they didn't use the same bands.)
So, er, anyway. It's a story because it means that AT&T and Verizon are basically preventing one of the major new features on the iPad from working, which ultimately doesn't really matter because for the most part you can't just buy data a-la-cart in the US anyway so it's not like you're likely to be switching providers enough to make being able to keep the SIM useful.
Wait, really? When I took a trip to Australia, I wound up getting a Japanese car from the car rental and was constantly turning on the windshield wipers when trying to signal.
Driving on the left? No big deal. Remembering where the turn signals were? Took the entire trip.
Of course, when I got back to the US and into my own (Japanese) car, the first thing I did after starting it was turn on the windshield wipers to indicate I was turning left out of my parking spot.
Well, to be fair, that story was immediately below the one they presumably intended to link.
Although now we have a definitive answer to "do the editors bother checking the stories being linked to when they post stories."
You mean something like Project Ara? (Actually, Project Ara's website sucks, try the Wikipedia page on it instead.)
People are working on a modular cell phone. Not open hardware, necessarily, but something which you can upgrade piecemeal. I don't think anyone's managed to create a real marketable solution, but - well, there are companies working on it.