This device is severely limited and would do a quick faceplant if it were not Apple. I don't say this as a troll; Apple creates a marketplace for their devices, and that's what makes them great.
This device NEEDS a dedicated app store to make it useful. There's nothing valuable written for touchpads right now - no decent OS support, no decent touch oriented apps, nothing. MS has been very lax in their support of touchpad devices because they've been chasing other things. WinMobile still thinks most people use a stylus on a PDA. They've ignored finger-driven phones for two full code cycles already. Most apps are desktop based (or laptop), so they're driven my mouse/pointer interaction. This iPad doesn't have a keyboard, so kb shortcuts that power users are used to are out the window. The lack of a WM app store means that practically anything you buy for a WM device is going to be $20-$30 per app from a 3rd party. It's hard to get a good stable of apps for less than the price of the phone!
It's Apple, so there's a single interface. That will get the accessory makers to make this thing connect to everything we already use (like the iPod is to car stereos...every heard of a Zune native interface on an mass produced aftermarket head unit?) By getting really good apps on this, people will find it useful, if not ideal. And ideal isn't what people want - they just want good.
Don't get me started on the cloud, though. I don't live in a major metro area, so finding 3G outside of my town is a bit dicey. That means 60-90kbps data rates, and I'm not going to get anything useful in realtime over a link like that. And if I don't pony up $360/yr (or tether my $1000/yr phone plan), I'm stuck with no cloud resources at all when I'm out of a wi-fi hotspot - which is practically everywhere. You can still use the cloud if you have local storage; you can't work off-cloud if you don't.
Even without the missed humor, there are things here that spell a challenge: No cell data on the stock model (it's a $130 upgrade), no flash in the browser (most video sites require it, and some commercial sites are solely flash (yes, I hate you RainforestCafe)), horrible battery life compared to an eReader (10h vs 2 weeks).
Will it succeed? Of course. Apple will tweak it, and it will have very cool app support. People who don't own an ereader won't realize how straining it is to read a full book on a backlit screen, or conversely how much easier it is to read an eInk page. It will get flash support of some kind, I suspect. And every accessory maker and their brother will make adapters for it. Actually, that's the only reason I have an iPod - it's the only mp3 player that works well with practically any car stereo.
BTW - You can get a Kindle DX with the same size screen, so the "full page" experience ereader already exists (with free 3G, at that).
The article was particularly thin on the mechanism for this push technology. It sounds a lot like you'll need to install their rootkit^Wmaintenance program which will spend endless resources on your machine and network indexing your files and listening out for the mothership to apply updates. This could add up to a lot of data traveling about. I've got a modest collection of about 8500 tracks - all ripped from CDs I've purchased. Now, of course they're not in MP3 format - I got fooled once ripping to a lossy format and did my "archival" rips with FLAC. Still, with hundreds of artists all trying to stream advertisements^Wcontent to my server, that could get annoying. Of course, that doesn't even address the security issues, or the presence of (as I like to call them) "rented/borrowed" content saved along side my "owned" library.
Based on probability of a breach: too much. If your chance of a breach is low (say, in the 1% per year range), that's only $2 per account compromised, or a cost of $600k per year. And great security only reduces the chance - it does not eliminate it.
There's also the lion attack argument: you only have to run faster than the slowest person being chased. Now, in this case, that might be the bottom 10%, but the goal is to be just enough better than the softest targets that you are unlikely to get hit. If you avoid the casual crackers and the working mafia, the only thing left to worry about is the one goof who is going to target _your_ system specifically. Since there is no perfect security system, you can ignore that last threat - it will hit you no matter how much you spend. You just have to be tight enough to make it unprofitable (or less profitable than other systems).
Business Managers already know this. They also know that - provided all hell doesn't break loose - people have very short memories. A minor "oops" every once in a while isn't a big deal, financially speaking. Call it the cost of doing business.
WOW is entertainment. If you stretch it, you might even call it a competition. I would venture that it is much more of a stretch to call this entertainment.
This happens all the time in civil suits. Generally, the plaintiff's atty will bill the client for reimbursable costs plus a percentage of the judgement. In this case, the firm may bill the woman for costs (printing, courier, telephone, etc.) which might come to a couple hundred dollars. In the civil world it would be a speculative suit on the part of the law firm. This is where the "rich" firms make their money - it's not in billing their "paltry" $200-300/hr rates.
Something is wrong with either your drive or your Windows config. Windows, I'll freely admit, isn't the best at estimating time. I don't know what algorithm they use, but it sure as rarely matches the profile I'm using. In XP, Vista, and now W7, loading video files from my USB drive via a PC to my unRaid server is pretty much constant at about 150-200Mb/s; i.e. about 8-12 minutes for an 8-9GB movie. My network-fu sucks, so most transfers are limited by my poorly configured 1000bt setup to about 200Mb/s regardless of source.
There is a direct laser version, but I think blue yields are still too expensive. The laser version is a projected display tech (like DLP), but uses a scanning mirror and a 1D array of MEMS mirrors - kind of like DLP but with the mirrors on one axis instead of a 2D array.
Phosphor burn is a real problem in static displays (like the command centers in TFA, which I didn't read). With the popularity of TV logos and scrolling news bars, it's a real issue on all phosphor based devices, like CRTs and plasmas (PDPs). Non-native aspect ratio content can be an issue too, with the pillarbox or letterbox bars shadowed on CRTs. My 5 year old CRT rear projection TV has pillarbox shadow lines despite using gray pillarbox bars. It's not bad but with more 16:9 content now I notice it.
Anyway - that's a pretty damned big phone. I'm more excited about the possibility of dual processor netbooks (or any notebook) with a fast processor and a ULV/super efficient processor that can shif on the fly to get a day's use if you're just surfing, or 3-4 hours of hot-n-heavy processing, without a 4 pound battery.
I guess on the x86 front, it's not much use if I'm stuck with a limited set of apps. I'm still waiting for a really good mobile browser, and it would be awesome to get some of my discipline-specific utility apps on a phone. Of course, that means windows, since that's all the apps are written for. So I guess this is cool for what it is, but it's still a pretty long stretch to get to useful.
PS - why would they indicate the capacity of the battery at 1850mAh without a voltage of the pack? I thought tech reporters at CES were supposed to be better than this.
High end cameras (the kind you'd be really worried about) generally have separate battery packs that recharge on a conditioning charger. They don't charge in-camera because no professional in their right mind is going to dock their camera for any length of time - they swap and go. There are options for studio photogs that will continuously power the cameras, but studio and underwater really aren't overlapping.
Interestingly, the housings already cost as much as (or more than) the camera itself. I just picked up a Nikon D3 on the used market for $2500 (offically for work), and the housings for them are north of $3-4k (a new D3s is $5300). I'll be sticking with my Fuji F30 and housing for holiday snaps of the fishes!
FWIW, a pressure gauge might not be terribly useful without a pretty heavy duty test rig. You can't test for external pressure without putting the housing in a second housing. You don't want to test in reverse (not all o-ring seals are reversable, it's based on groove geometry), and even if you were foolish enough to pull a vacuum on the casing it would still only be one atmosphere - which is likely 25-35% of the pressure differential on a "normal" dive.
I know this is a late response, but I didn't see it in the children comments:
USB is capable of delivering 5V at 1A, or 5W of power, per port in its maximum configuration. This is likely where the spec came from, since most manufacturers are moving towards the mini-usb as a power source. By providing the current standard limit, most device designs will already conform downstream of the induction coil. They've simply designed to the marketplace.
What they didn't necessarily consider is that it would be great if we could get 10-20W out of a charger to get this !@#$% charged a little faster. Especially things like phones, which can take a significant fraction of that 5W to operate under heavy use conditions.
Hmmmm, I haven't RTFA or looked at the plans for this, but if it's really 4 square miles of coverage, that's about $6.50 per square foot. Now, this is a neat idea, but I can't imagine anything with that kind of cost to construct on site. Even with the most efficient design and all factory mauf. parts, that's a pretty hard number to hit for coverage of a structure to withstand environmental loads.
Apple will release a horse, but it will have sparkly dust on it and the unicorn they glue to the forehead will be very lifelike and you won't be able to see the glue at all. It will be trained so that a 6 year old can ride it. It will run slower, cost more, and never be seen in an actual race or ridden by a professional jockey, except in marketing literature. But, oh, it will polished.
That's not to say that MS won't show up with a mule and a paper cone taped to it's forehead with duct tape. They probably will. MS has an amazing ability to fuck things up, or start with a good idea and then abandon it (can you say Media Center or WinMobile?). I think a tablet is more likely to be a limited use device, and MS just sucks wind at such things. That's a shame, too, since I'm not fond of Apple's lack of extensibility on anything they make.
I'd never heard of Kinepak - looked it up; cool stuff. I honestly didn't think you could get an AN explosive that was useful under a couple of pounds of material. I guess the smallest version (1/3#) might meet the screening requirements for 3oz of liquid, but it would be close. This presumes, of course, that the TSA didn't just miss this one entirely, which would have needed to be the case if this joker got det cord or a cap on board, too.
I agree that, while it could have done pretty significant damage to the nearby passengers and interior, it might be a stretch to think it would have crippled the airplane without some serious luck involved.
Not in quantities you could get onto a plane, afaik. I'm not aware of the smallest quantity of ANFO which will detonate, but I suspect it to be well north of 1lb, and pretty obvious in carry on luggage. Even if you grant that he somehow carried on more than 3 oz of (clearly banned) fuel oil, ANFO requires a detonation for initiation, and that means getting a blasting cap on board as well as everything else. It certainly didn't sound like a blasting cap.
Now, the GP may have been onto something with the KMNOx and glycerine, as neither are particularly unusual, and small quantities can be made to react. Then again, it's a pretty mundane fire that can be set with it. I played around with some years ago when I dabbled in amateur pyrotechnics, and it's neat to watch, but pretty low key. About all it would do on a plane in start a small fire. Water should slow down or extinguish the reaction, since it would dilute the constituents and raise the total heat required to sustain the reaction.
I'm going to need a 16,000Ah rating at 48V, plus a 100kW inverter to power my 1600SF, 1960s ranch. Granted, it's not the most efficient home ever built, but it's all electric (yes, it's been upgraded to 400A/240V service, and I really do run through 800kWH a week during cold winter periods...which is when the electricity is most likely to fail).
Then again, why would you want to go to a theater. Action movies are best watched alone, with the sound up to reference, on a big screen, in your house (3D notwithstanding, I suppose). If you need a friend to hold your hand, grab your Signature Visa (you do have one, right?) and get two tickets on Fandango with the B1G1 promo and offer to take someone to the movies "on you."
I haven't decided if I'm going to see it in the theater, mainly because I find the crowds annoying and the snacks too expensive. I'll probably get it and watch at home when it comes out, though.
12 cities is a fairly good test, presuming it was done without foreknowledge of coverage. Really, it's a much better test than your one city version.
I've only had three cell carriers in the past decade, and they were all about the same when it came to CS - they all suck donkey balls. Coverage is utterly random - or rather it's entirely RF physics based, which is to say effectively random - and you'll find mysterious dead areas on every carrier. I even tried a dual-phone month on my last switch (two 30 day prepaid phones on AT&T and Verizon), and determined that they were the same in my area most of the time, and had roughly the same crappy service percentage but in different areas.
Somehow (without RTFA) I have a hard time declaring an actual winner of the result was 4 to 6 with two ties. To me, that's a toss up.
They're slogan should be "works with nothing." How can you develop much of anything with such a shotgun approach to hardware. It's more like a phone family than a computer. I'm sure it can be done, but nothing will run quickly (since everything has to be interpreted for the processor installed) unless it's compiled across all chipsets. Talk about a driver support nightmare.
This would be good for the hacker kids of the 1970s/1980s - lots of time to play around, no mature apps (that cost less than $1000), and no real expectation that you could get real work done on a small computer.
I absolutely agree, sort of. What this will likely do, however, is force a settlement between Google and the French publisher for the rights...and I don't think it will go in the publishers favor.
See, Google has gotten us addicted to information. Easy searching. The world at our fingertips. What happens when Google pulls the plug on all French language sites, citing the French interpretation of the right to excerpt for search reasons? People are going to have a fit over it. Somebody is going to have to give, and I suspect France is a relatively small proportion of Google's revenue - at least compared to Google's share of the French search engine mindshare.
Of course, they won't be all confrontational like that - they'll be far more political. I don't see Google actually "losing".
I usually use the first day of my birth month, and the correct year. Nobody needs anything more accurate than that. Of course, now that I think about it, I suppose I should use February 29th of my birth year. The double bonus is that that date doesn't exist.
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This device is severely limited and would do a quick faceplant if it were not Apple. I don't say this as a troll; Apple creates a marketplace for their devices, and that's what makes them great.
This device NEEDS a dedicated app store to make it useful. There's nothing valuable written for touchpads right now - no decent OS support, no decent touch oriented apps, nothing. MS has been very lax in their support of touchpad devices because they've been chasing other things. WinMobile still thinks most people use a stylus on a PDA. They've ignored finger-driven phones for two full code cycles already. Most apps are desktop based (or laptop), so they're driven my mouse/pointer interaction. This iPad doesn't have a keyboard, so kb shortcuts that power users are used to are out the window. The lack of a WM app store means that practically anything you buy for a WM device is going to be $20-$30 per app from a 3rd party. It's hard to get a good stable of apps for less than the price of the phone!
It's Apple, so there's a single interface. That will get the accessory makers to make this thing connect to everything we already use (like the iPod is to car stereos...every heard of a Zune native interface on an mass produced aftermarket head unit?) By getting really good apps on this, people will find it useful, if not ideal. And ideal isn't what people want - they just want good.
Don't get me started on the cloud, though. I don't live in a major metro area, so finding 3G outside of my town is a bit dicey. That means 60-90kbps data rates, and I'm not going to get anything useful in realtime over a link like that. And if I don't pony up $360/yr (or tether my $1000/yr phone plan), I'm stuck with no cloud resources at all when I'm out of a wi-fi hotspot - which is practically everywhere. You can still use the cloud if you have local storage; you can't work off-cloud if you don't.
Even without the missed humor, there are things here that spell a challenge: No cell data on the stock model (it's a $130 upgrade), no flash in the browser (most video sites require it, and some commercial sites are solely flash (yes, I hate you RainforestCafe)), horrible battery life compared to an eReader (10h vs 2 weeks).
Will it succeed? Of course. Apple will tweak it, and it will have very cool app support. People who don't own an ereader won't realize how straining it is to read a full book on a backlit screen, or conversely how much easier it is to read an eInk page. It will get flash support of some kind, I suspect. And every accessory maker and their brother will make adapters for it. Actually, that's the only reason I have an iPod - it's the only mp3 player that works well with practically any car stereo.
BTW - You can get a Kindle DX with the same size screen, so the "full page" experience ereader already exists (with free 3G, at that).
The article was particularly thin on the mechanism for this push technology. It sounds a lot like you'll need to install their rootkit^Wmaintenance program which will spend endless resources on your machine and network indexing your files and listening out for the mothership to apply updates. This could add up to a lot of data traveling about. I've got a modest collection of about 8500 tracks - all ripped from CDs I've purchased. Now, of course they're not in MP3 format - I got fooled once ripping to a lossy format and did my "archival" rips with FLAC. Still, with hundreds of artists all trying to stream advertisements^Wcontent to my server, that could get annoying. Of course, that doesn't even address the security issues, or the presence of (as I like to call them) "rented/borrowed" content saved along side my "owned" library.
Based on probability of a breach: too much. If your chance of a breach is low (say, in the 1% per year range), that's only $2 per account compromised, or a cost of $600k per year. And great security only reduces the chance - it does not eliminate it.
There's also the lion attack argument: you only have to run faster than the slowest person being chased. Now, in this case, that might be the bottom 10%, but the goal is to be just enough better than the softest targets that you are unlikely to get hit. If you avoid the casual crackers and the working mafia, the only thing left to worry about is the one goof who is going to target _your_ system specifically. Since there is no perfect security system, you can ignore that last threat - it will hit you no matter how much you spend. You just have to be tight enough to make it unprofitable (or less profitable than other systems).
Business Managers already know this. They also know that - provided all hell doesn't break loose - people have very short memories. A minor "oops" every once in a while isn't a big deal, financially speaking. Call it the cost of doing business.
WOW is entertainment. If you stretch it, you might even call it a competition. I would venture that it is much more of a stretch to call this entertainment.
This happens all the time in civil suits. Generally, the plaintiff's atty will bill the client for reimbursable costs plus a percentage of the judgement. In this case, the firm may bill the woman for costs (printing, courier, telephone, etc.) which might come to a couple hundred dollars. In the civil world it would be a speculative suit on the part of the law firm. This is where the "rich" firms make their money - it's not in billing their "paltry" $200-300/hr rates.
Something is wrong with either your drive or your Windows config. Windows, I'll freely admit, isn't the best at estimating time. I don't know what algorithm they use, but it sure as rarely matches the profile I'm using. In XP, Vista, and now W7, loading video files from my USB drive via a PC to my unRaid server is pretty much constant at about 150-200Mb/s; i.e. about 8-12 minutes for an 8-9GB movie. My network-fu sucks, so most transfers are limited by my poorly configured 1000bt setup to about 200Mb/s regardless of source.
There is a direct laser version, but I think blue yields are still too expensive. The laser version is a projected display tech (like DLP), but uses a scanning mirror and a 1D array of MEMS mirrors - kind of like DLP but with the mirrors on one axis instead of a 2D array.
Phosphor burn is a real problem in static displays (like the command centers in TFA, which I didn't read). With the popularity of TV logos and scrolling news bars, it's a real issue on all phosphor based devices, like CRTs and plasmas (PDPs). Non-native aspect ratio content can be an issue too, with the pillarbox or letterbox bars shadowed on CRTs. My 5 year old CRT rear projection TV has pillarbox shadow lines despite using gray pillarbox bars. It's not bad but with more 16:9 content now I notice it.
I know...that what she said...
Anyway - that's a pretty damned big phone. I'm more excited about the possibility of dual processor netbooks (or any notebook) with a fast processor and a ULV/super efficient processor that can shif on the fly to get a day's use if you're just surfing, or 3-4 hours of hot-n-heavy processing, without a 4 pound battery.
I guess on the x86 front, it's not much use if I'm stuck with a limited set of apps. I'm still waiting for a really good mobile browser, and it would be awesome to get some of my discipline-specific utility apps on a phone. Of course, that means windows, since that's all the apps are written for. So I guess this is cool for what it is, but it's still a pretty long stretch to get to useful.
PS - why would they indicate the capacity of the battery at 1850mAh without a voltage of the pack? I thought tech reporters at CES were supposed to be better than this.
High end cameras (the kind you'd be really worried about) generally have separate battery packs that recharge on a conditioning charger. They don't charge in-camera because no professional in their right mind is going to dock their camera for any length of time - they swap and go. There are options for studio photogs that will continuously power the cameras, but studio and underwater really aren't overlapping.
Interestingly, the housings already cost as much as (or more than) the camera itself. I just picked up a Nikon D3 on the used market for $2500 (offically for work), and the housings for them are north of $3-4k (a new D3s is $5300). I'll be sticking with my Fuji F30 and housing for holiday snaps of the fishes!
FWIW, a pressure gauge might not be terribly useful without a pretty heavy duty test rig. You can't test for external pressure without putting the housing in a second housing. You don't want to test in reverse (not all o-ring seals are reversable, it's based on groove geometry), and even if you were foolish enough to pull a vacuum on the casing it would still only be one atmosphere - which is likely 25-35% of the pressure differential on a "normal" dive.
I know this is a late response, but I didn't see it in the children comments:
USB is capable of delivering 5V at 1A, or 5W of power, per port in its maximum configuration. This is likely where the spec came from, since most manufacturers are moving towards the mini-usb as a power source. By providing the current standard limit, most device designs will already conform downstream of the induction coil. They've simply designed to the marketplace.
What they didn't necessarily consider is that it would be great if we could get 10-20W out of a charger to get this !@#$% charged a little faster. Especially things like phones, which can take a significant fraction of that 5W to operate under heavy use conditions.
So...you're okay with the idea of being required to be seen naked in return for money. That makes all the difference in the world. ;-)
Hmmmm, I haven't RTFA or looked at the plans for this, but if it's really 4 square miles of coverage, that's about $6.50 per square foot. Now, this is a neat idea, but I can't imagine anything with that kind of cost to construct on site. Even with the most efficient design and all factory mauf. parts, that's a pretty hard number to hit for coverage of a structure to withstand environmental loads.
They've had to license "Droid" from LucasFilms. Seriously - it's noted in the fine print of every Droid ad I've seen.
Apple will release a horse, but it will have sparkly dust on it and the unicorn they glue to the forehead will be very lifelike and you won't be able to see the glue at all. It will be trained so that a 6 year old can ride it. It will run slower, cost more, and never be seen in an actual race or ridden by a professional jockey, except in marketing literature. But, oh, it will polished.
That's not to say that MS won't show up with a mule and a paper cone taped to it's forehead with duct tape. They probably will. MS has an amazing ability to fuck things up, or start with a good idea and then abandon it (can you say Media Center or WinMobile?). I think a tablet is more likely to be a limited use device, and MS just sucks wind at such things. That's a shame, too, since I'm not fond of Apple's lack of extensibility on anything they make.
I'd never heard of Kinepak - looked it up; cool stuff. I honestly didn't think you could get an AN explosive that was useful under a couple of pounds of material. I guess the smallest version (1/3#) might meet the screening requirements for 3oz of liquid, but it would be close. This presumes, of course, that the TSA didn't just miss this one entirely, which would have needed to be the case if this joker got det cord or a cap on board, too.
I agree that, while it could have done pretty significant damage to the nearby passengers and interior, it might be a stretch to think it would have crippled the airplane without some serious luck involved.
Not in quantities you could get onto a plane, afaik. I'm not aware of the smallest quantity of ANFO which will detonate, but I suspect it to be well north of 1lb, and pretty obvious in carry on luggage. Even if you grant that he somehow carried on more than 3 oz of (clearly banned) fuel oil, ANFO requires a detonation for initiation, and that means getting a blasting cap on board as well as everything else. It certainly didn't sound like a blasting cap.
Now, the GP may have been onto something with the KMNOx and glycerine, as neither are particularly unusual, and small quantities can be made to react. Then again, it's a pretty mundane fire that can be set with it. I played around with some years ago when I dabbled in amateur pyrotechnics, and it's neat to watch, but pretty low key. About all it would do on a plane in start a small fire. Water should slow down or extinguish the reaction, since it would dilute the constituents and raise the total heat required to sustain the reaction.
Long live sneakernet, and in the case of the more tech savvy, and private communications.
I'm going to need a 16,000Ah rating at 48V, plus a 100kW inverter to power my 1600SF, 1960s ranch. Granted, it's not the most efficient home ever built, but it's all electric (yes, it's been upgraded to 400A/240V service, and I really do run through 800kWH a week during cold winter periods...which is when the electricity is most likely to fail).
Then again, why would you want to go to a theater. Action movies are best watched alone, with the sound up to reference, on a big screen, in your house (3D notwithstanding, I suppose). If you need a friend to hold your hand, grab your Signature Visa (you do have one, right?) and get two tickets on Fandango with the B1G1 promo and offer to take someone to the movies "on you."
I haven't decided if I'm going to see it in the theater, mainly because I find the crowds annoying and the snacks too expensive. I'll probably get it and watch at home when it comes out, though.
They usually remove your note when they forward the lack of payment to the three credit agencies as a delinquency.
12 cities is a fairly good test, presuming it was done without foreknowledge of coverage. Really, it's a much better test than your one city version.
I've only had three cell carriers in the past decade, and they were all about the same when it came to CS - they all suck donkey balls. Coverage is utterly random - or rather it's entirely RF physics based, which is to say effectively random - and you'll find mysterious dead areas on every carrier. I even tried a dual-phone month on my last switch (two 30 day prepaid phones on AT&T and Verizon), and determined that they were the same in my area most of the time, and had roughly the same crappy service percentage but in different areas.
Somehow (without RTFA) I have a hard time declaring an actual winner of the result was 4 to 6 with two ties. To me, that's a toss up.
They're slogan should be "works with nothing." How can you develop much of anything with such a shotgun approach to hardware. It's more like a phone family than a computer. I'm sure it can be done, but nothing will run quickly (since everything has to be interpreted for the processor installed) unless it's compiled across all chipsets. Talk about a driver support nightmare.
This would be good for the hacker kids of the 1970s/1980s - lots of time to play around, no mature apps (that cost less than $1000), and no real expectation that you could get real work done on a small computer.
I absolutely agree, sort of. What this will likely do, however, is force a settlement between Google and the French publisher for the rights...and I don't think it will go in the publishers favor.
See, Google has gotten us addicted to information. Easy searching. The world at our fingertips. What happens when Google pulls the plug on all French language sites, citing the French interpretation of the right to excerpt for search reasons? People are going to have a fit over it. Somebody is going to have to give, and I suspect France is a relatively small proportion of Google's revenue - at least compared to Google's share of the French search engine mindshare.
Of course, they won't be all confrontational like that - they'll be far more political. I don't see Google actually "losing".
I usually use the first day of my birth month, and the correct year. Nobody needs anything more accurate than that. Of course, now that I think about it, I suppose I should use February 29th of my birth year. The double bonus is that that date doesn't exist.