if the rich are in the station and the poor people on earth have no money, how do the rich people make more money to pay the bills?
The same way they do now -- patents, IP lawyers, lobbying the government, and making sure we're beholden to them for absolutely everything and become modern serfs.
The corporate wet dream, and the standard dystopian future -- an oligarchy where even the food and air will be controlled by corporations.
You think when Larry Ellison is on his own private island it's all that different from being on a space station? The plebes still have to jump even when he's sitting in luxury.
When did hacking turn into "Cyber-terrorism"? Has the world gone stupid?
If you control the spin and the message, you can make it mean anything you like. And "anybody who disagrees with what we do" is now the blanket term for "terrorists".
Once they have that, they can do anything they want, at any time, and keep it secret under national security laws.
Welcome to 1984, because what they are insisting on is Big Brother -- and anybody who disagrees must be a terrorist. Once you convince most of the populace it's "for their own good", they'll toe the line and decide anybody who isn't must be a terrorist and stop disputing it.
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers" Seems fitting here.
Let's ignore that some of what he leaked was about the US more or less illegally spying on their own citizens and people in other countries. Let's ignore that not everyone feels they should be spied on by the US. Let's pretend that some of this spying wasn't getting into the unconstitutional domestically and illegal where it happened. Let's completely ignore than political asylum has been around for centuries and America has certainly granted it to Russians over the years who were equally damaging. While we're at it, let's pretend that this 'apprehending' is essentially illegal in the countries where it happens.
Instead, let's put the focus on how a bunch of nihilists and anarchists might decide to stage a little retribution and how God himself told America they're allowed to do these things and fuck everyone else.
Because it couldn't possibly be because people disagree with what the NSA and other agencies do, or that everyone else in the world is tired of them thinking that what everyone else's rights don't matter. There's no way that the rest of the world doesn't feel like the US has overstepped its authority in other countries. It's inconceivable that we don't think you can have Liberty if we have to give up all of our privacy in order to make you safe. People couldn't possibly be protesting because the US is rapidly becoming a surveillance state which will happily trample on people's rights while telling other countries they should be more open and free.
Fuck you Mr. Hayden, we're not buying the misdirection to a bunch of nerds in their basement. You may not be able to understand why people are venting their displeasure, but that doesn't mean your stated reasons are the right ones.
See, if they're looking at everything for content, they lose some of their common carrier provisions.
If they're looking at what's in your traffic, then they will also need to be looking for child pornography, drug deals, terrorism, cyberbullying, and everything else. They won't be able to claim that they're just a network connection and not responsible for what's going over it. They will, in fact, become responsible for what goes over the wire for everything.
Of course, the main problem I have with this is that the entire world seems to have become subservient to copyright law. The asshats in the MPAA et all won't be happy until we can't do anything with technology without their permission, and making sure they get paid for it.
This is just more in the slow decline to where corporations run the world, and we're just there to do the manual labor and give them money.
FTW, let's go all "Tyler Durden" on them. Corporations have just become rent-seeking douchebags who tell the government what to do (like extending copyright to obscene periods on works they nicked from the public domain) -- and I'm pretty sure none of us got to vote for them.
It'll natively write Doc, PPT, XLS and TXT files. It seems to be a nice interface for a touch screen and isn't ad-ridden, and has integrations to store stuff in the cloud.
Sorry Microsoft, but someone has beaten you to the punch and delivered something which works for me.
People always say this. I don't think they've actually looked at real Ikea furniture
I've definitely looked at real Ikea furniture, and I knew someone who actually made Ikea furniture. Some of the cheaper stuff is just plain garbage... it won't survive a move, but if you assemble it and keep it in the same place for years it will serve. But, anything made out of particle board (sawdust and glue essentially) isn't going to be as durable as real wood is.
The La-Z-boy chair is the lowest quality furniture in my living room. And feels it.
Are you sure it's a 'real' La-Z-Boy? Or just a La-Z-Boy inspired 'recliner'?;-)
My leather sofa made by them is of really high quality, and my father's 25+ year old chair got the reclining mechanism replaced for free when it wore out.
My direct experience with La-Z-Boy is that the stuff is well made. Several notches higher than many competing brands in fact. And they stand behind their product -- not something I usually attribute to a company making low quality stuff.
Whilst this might sound rudimentary, when taking notes, do you advise to wiki/blog this sort of stuff, or just notepad it first up and write it up later?
Your time with the out-going person is limited, and dwindling... save your pretty-printing and formatting for later. Get your notes first, and make them pretty and formalized later.
You don't want to waste your time doing layout while he's becoming less and less interested in the fate of this stuff.
Because, I can tell you from having been on both sides of the fence of this... the person leaving cares half us much with each passing day.
Because we have a finite amount of resources as a nation (man hours, kilowatts, lumber, etc.) at any given time, the only way to make everyone richer is to use those resources as efficiently as we possibly can to provide what people need and want.
And what evidence do you have to suggest that is happening? The gap between rich and poor grows every year, which means it isn't making 'everyone richer'. In fact, it certainly looks like the opposite is happening.
And as far as using those resources as efficiently as possible, again, I'm not convinced we do. How is it more 'efficient' to make Larry Ellison even more wealthy and a bigger asshole? Is he proportionally doing more work, or is he just the guy at the top collecting massive rewards?
Profit is the measurement of how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted.
Bullshit. It's a measure of how much it costs you to extract money from your clients relative to how much you rake in.
A credit card scam can be hugely profitable, but it has no relation whatsoever to 'how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted'.
So many corporate profits these days are a shell game to make one thing look more expensive and defray the costs to someone else. You think Hollywood accounting is about 'how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted'? Or do you think it's about shuffling around money to tell one group of people you lost massive amounts of money and can't pay them, and tell another group how much money you raked in.
There's an unwillingness to really look at everything when you over-simplify so you are by default being ignorant of the whole truth.
And you have so over simplified what 'profits' mean as to make everything you said meaningless drivel.
This whole thing about all of Islam being inherently violent is being brought up again and again by people trying to show about how Christianity is superior
I can assure you, there are atheists who have no interest in saying 'Christianity is superior' who look at some of these things and think "WTF???"
We also look at some of the things some Christians tell us they're convinced their god told them and think "WTF???"
Sometimes, I hear someone from a different religion saying what their god said, and I think "WTF???"
From the outside looking in, there's enough crazy and indefensible stuff to go around.
TFA seemed a little thin on details, but I believe he is being lashed for having said words to the effect of "people are free to believe or not believe" -- at which point what is being punished is the statement that you are in fact free to disbelieve.
And I'm suddenly finding myself thinking "gee, by the time I was 13 and had given up on the belief in god as something I inherited from my parents but couldn't get behind, does being publicly lashed or sentenced to death seem like a reasonable thing". And I'm forced to conclude that, no, it isn't.
Unless someone can demonstrate that this database includes data on everyone, rather than suspects that they're authorized to track.
Because they have been saying they need to collect everything so that when they know what they're looking for it's already there.
They've been steadily expanding into the "record everything" domain for years now.
I see no reason to doubt that they're grabbing everything they can get and then deciding if it's pertinent later. That's been their stated goal for a long time.
I have a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse pad combo and when I use it with my Nexus 7
Any product recommendations? The idea of being able to have a mouse to work with my Nexus while using VPN/RDP is really interesting for me -- but I got the impression you need a Bluetooth device which is more geared to mobile devices to make the pairing work. (I've only done cursory research into it at this point). I've got the keyboard, but haven't done enough digging into the mouse yet.
Screen's a bit small, of course, but when I'm on the road and need to get into the office network post haste, nothing beats it.
Indeed, as soon as I discovered I could get the VPN client and RDP clients installed, I ran out and got the keyboard.
Had to go out of town the other week for some family stuff on short notice, and it meant I at least had a minimum level of access to things. And all in something small enough to throw into my bag.
For that functionality alone, what I spent on my Nexus 7 was money well spent. Because it means my infotainment device can allow me to do some level of work if I really had to.
I see people replying "FUD" to every Slashdot story these days. I'm not sure what it means anymore. Oh, I know "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt" - but it is how it's used in context that I don't get.
Zynga is publicly traded.
If Facebook is doing something which might lead to eating Zynga's lunch (so to speak), that's the issue -- it's certainly doubt it you own stock in Zynga.
And since the entire summary is about how this relates to Zynga, I assume that's the people the FUD applies to.
To me it's more "company gets successful on Facebook, others follow suit with Facebook's help, film at 11" kind of story. But, the long-term future of Zynga has zero interest for me.
This just means that Facebook is planning on helping develop more stuff for their platform in exchange for a cut of the money. And since Facebook want to make as much money as they can, it's pretty much what you'd expect.
I have a finite amount of money, and you can bet your ass I'm going to economize where I can.
The world is fucked up, and I can't single-handedly fix it.
Go occupy your mom's basement or something, there Zorro.
Unless you live in a commune where you grow your own organic produce, weave your own cloth, and power the computer you're sitting at with a bicycle... you're probably just as full of shit as the rest of us.
Exactly. And even for typing on a sofa, a laptop is much more convenient than a tablet.
I beg to differ.
I bought a Nexus 7 a while back, and have subsequently bought the case with the Bluetooth keyboard. Separate from that, the Google keyboard app has "swipe to type" where you basically connect the dots of the word and it figures out what you intended. I didn't even know that was there until recently when I stumbled on it.
I've found with the ability to drag your finger around means I can type at what I'd call a reasonable speed, but definitely not my usual typing at a keyboard and a desk. It's not handwriting, but I can waggle my finger around where the letters are and type at a fast enough pace that it's usable. In fact, it's a pretty damned good compromise.
Sometimes, I'm willing to sacrifice a little speed in typing for the comfort of doing it from my lazy boy or my backyard. Or in an airport. Or in the hotel bar. Or avoiding bringing my laptop when I travel but still need to keep some minimum connectivity.
Nobody is suggesting a tablet is going to replace your desktop machine just yet, but it's getting to the point where you can at least use it for some stuff. The ability to VPN into work and remote desktop to my machine from my Nexus is nice to have as an option that can cut down how often I need to bring my laptop with me.
A tablet cannot succeed when it depends on accessories to be useful, especially when those accessories are optional and hurting mobility.
I don't see those accessories as hurting mobility. I see them as making the device more flexible and useful in more situations.
I can noodle about on it and not ever do anything but basic typing or viewing content. I can use the on screen keyboard to at least be able to respond to emails from a more mobile device in a comfy chair, and the drag and type allows for a decent speed. And I can put it on a desk, turn on the Bluetooth keyboard, and have access to a small keyboard which is faster than the on-screen one. All without taking it out of the case that has the keyboard.
For what I paid for the Nexus, there's a ton of utility in that device for me.
It's at least a generation of technology away from being able to replace my desktop machine, but given that the latest version of the Nexus 7 is running at full HD. And a generation of technology is about a year or so now.
And given the Google is making that $40 thing that allows you to stream to a TV onto HDMI -- the technology exists that you could very quickly plug your tablet into your TV and with a wireless keyboard and mouse and turn pretty much any TV and tablet into a workstation.
A tablet isn't a PC. That's the point I keep hearing this on Slashdot, and I disagree. It's not the easiest form factor to use for some things, and has some limitations to it... but it's definitely a computer, and it's definitely personal.
My Nexus 7 lets me open a VPN connection, and remote desktop to a Windows machine. With a Bluetooth keyboard I can type without using the touch screen, and apparently you can buy a Bluetooth mouse for Android devices. It would be like a little tiny laptop -- not where I'd want to do a full days work, but when travelling it's at least nice to have a lightweight option instead of dragging my entire laptop.
Want to be wildly successful? Go invest a lot of time and money into figuring our how to make a 8.5 x 11" replacement for paper. That includes being able to write and draw engineering diagrams with a 0.2mm tip.
Everyone says this, and then forgets that they're a small part of the market.
You're describing a fairly niche product... not everyone is planning to draw engineering diagrams with a 0.2mm tip on a tablet. You aren't the entire market, and I suspect that most potential buyers of tablets would be thinking "I don't need that". I've seen small-tipped styluses for touch screens. Likely nowhere near 0.2mm.
But "wildly successful" can't come from the small chunk of the market for high-end professional tablets that can do the stuff you describe. At this rate, give it a few years and you'll end up there anyway. For now, they're mostly a small consumer device not intended for doing all of your work on.
"Me too" doesn't cut it. Have some vision, Microsoft. I dare you.
And, when was the last time that happened? Microsoft has been doing "me too" for a VERY long time, and while they have occasionally brought something innovative to market (the Kinect for instance) it's often technology they've bought from someone else (the Kinect for instance).
I'm just not sure that as a company they're capable of doing that.
So I'm forced to conclude that Microsoft is either exceedingly out of touch with what consumers actually want, or they've lost a lot of good will over the years and people are deciding they don't want their products.
For years Microsoft has more or less allowed the hardware makers to keep up with the needs of running their stuff -- but it sounds like they're not willing to foot the bill (and carry the risk) for getting a Microsoft product to market.
Sounds like Windows RT is fast becoming a complete flop.
Welcome to the another manifestation of the culture of "I've got mine. Fuck you."
You know, the sad thing is since everyone's employers are fucking them over and making them part of this grand middle class which makes $10.50-$11.50/hour (or driving down wages through the use of H1Bs to try to move us there)... nobody has any money left to spend extra on buying things which support local businesses.
So at the end of the day if it comes down to stretching my dollars as far as I can... well, fuck trying to make the world a better place. The book is cheaper, and I didn't pay shipping.
At the end of the day it's "I'm barely hanging onto mine, fuck the world". In this giant race to the bottom that is globalization, most if us are just trying to stay on the rung we're at.
And, yes, I'm aware that in the long run that's a lousy strategy, but in the long run, it looks like we're all fucked anyway. Wal Mart and Amazon are evil corporations, and I know that, but at the end of the day I still need to look out for my own shit. And if they can save me some money on what I'm buying that I can use for something else... well, it's hard to overlook that.
Slashdot Mirror
The same way they do now -- patents, IP lawyers, lobbying the government, and making sure we're beholden to them for absolutely everything and become modern serfs.
The corporate wet dream, and the standard dystopian future -- an oligarchy where even the food and air will be controlled by corporations.
You think when Larry Ellison is on his own private island it's all that different from being on a space station? The plebes still have to jump even when he's sitting in luxury.
If you control the spin and the message, you can make it mean anything you like. And "anybody who disagrees with what we do" is now the blanket term for "terrorists".
Once they have that, they can do anything they want, at any time, and keep it secret under national security laws.
Welcome to 1984, because what they are insisting on is Big Brother -- and anybody who disagrees must be a terrorist. Once you convince most of the populace it's "for their own good", they'll toe the line and decide anybody who isn't must be a terrorist and stop disputing it.
And then you have them.
Papers please, comrade.
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers" Seems fitting here.
Let's ignore that some of what he leaked was about the US more or less illegally spying on their own citizens and people in other countries. Let's ignore that not everyone feels they should be spied on by the US. Let's pretend that some of this spying wasn't getting into the unconstitutional domestically and illegal where it happened. Let's completely ignore than political asylum has been around for centuries and America has certainly granted it to Russians over the years who were equally damaging. While we're at it, let's pretend that this 'apprehending' is essentially illegal in the countries where it happens.
Instead, let's put the focus on how a bunch of nihilists and anarchists might decide to stage a little retribution and how God himself told America they're allowed to do these things and fuck everyone else.
Because it couldn't possibly be because people disagree with what the NSA and other agencies do, or that everyone else in the world is tired of them thinking that what everyone else's rights don't matter. There's no way that the rest of the world doesn't feel like the US has overstepped its authority in other countries. It's inconceivable that we don't think you can have Liberty if we have to give up all of our privacy in order to make you safe. People couldn't possibly be protesting because the US is rapidly becoming a surveillance state which will happily trample on people's rights while telling other countries they should be more open and free.
Fuck you Mr. Hayden, we're not buying the misdirection to a bunch of nerds in their basement. You may not be able to understand why people are venting their displeasure, but that doesn't mean your stated reasons are the right ones.
See, if they're looking at everything for content, they lose some of their common carrier provisions.
If they're looking at what's in your traffic, then they will also need to be looking for child pornography, drug deals, terrorism, cyberbullying, and everything else. They won't be able to claim that they're just a network connection and not responsible for what's going over it. They will, in fact, become responsible for what goes over the wire for everything.
Of course, the main problem I have with this is that the entire world seems to have become subservient to copyright law. The asshats in the MPAA et all won't be happy until we can't do anything with technology without their permission, and making sure they get paid for it.
This is just more in the slow decline to where corporations run the world, and we're just there to do the manual labor and give them money.
FTW, let's go all "Tyler Durden" on them. Corporations have just become rent-seeking douchebags who tell the government what to do (like extending copyright to obscene periods on works they nicked from the public domain) -- and I'm pretty sure none of us got to vote for them.
If you have an Android device, get King Office.
It'll natively write Doc, PPT, XLS and TXT files. It seems to be a nice interface for a touch screen and isn't ad-ridden, and has integrations to store stuff in the cloud.
Sorry Microsoft, but someone has beaten you to the punch and delivered something which works for me.
Unless there's enough that it starts to seep into your groundwater or fish stocks, or the animals you're hunting.
At which point it certainly is a contamination.
I've definitely looked at real Ikea furniture, and I knew someone who actually made Ikea furniture. Some of the cheaper stuff is just plain garbage ... it won't survive a move, but if you assemble it and keep it in the same place for years it will serve. But, anything made out of particle board (sawdust and glue essentially) isn't going to be as durable as real wood is.
Are you sure it's a 'real' La-Z-Boy? Or just a La-Z-Boy inspired 'recliner'? ;-)
My leather sofa made by them is of really high quality, and my father's 25+ year old chair got the reclining mechanism replaced for free when it wore out.
My direct experience with La-Z-Boy is that the stuff is well made. Several notches higher than many competing brands in fact. And they stand behind their product -- not something I usually attribute to a company making low quality stuff.
Ummm, what?
Unless we're talking about the currency, pounds certainly are a weight measure.
Your time with the out-going person is limited, and dwindling ... save your pretty-printing and formatting for later. Get your notes first, and make them pretty and formalized later.
You don't want to waste your time doing layout while he's becoming less and less interested in the fate of this stuff.
Because, I can tell you from having been on both sides of the fence of this ... the person leaving cares half us much with each passing day.
And what evidence do you have to suggest that is happening? The gap between rich and poor grows every year, which means it isn't making 'everyone richer'. In fact, it certainly looks like the opposite is happening.
And as far as using those resources as efficiently as possible, again, I'm not convinced we do. How is it more 'efficient' to make Larry Ellison even more wealthy and a bigger asshole? Is he proportionally doing more work, or is he just the guy at the top collecting massive rewards?
Bullshit. It's a measure of how much it costs you to extract money from your clients relative to how much you rake in.
A credit card scam can be hugely profitable, but it has no relation whatsoever to 'how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted'.
So many corporate profits these days are a shell game to make one thing look more expensive and defray the costs to someone else. You think Hollywood accounting is about 'how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted'? Or do you think it's about shuffling around money to tell one group of people you lost massive amounts of money and can't pay them, and tell another group how much money you raked in.
And you have so over simplified what 'profits' mean as to make everything you said meaningless drivel.
That usually means the acronym has been around so long that it has effectively become a word in its own right, even if it started as an acronym.
I don't even find the cost of ink makes it worth owning a color inkjet, but a 3D printer is cost effective?
That's a little surprising. The stuff you feed into the printer must be dirt cheap, or at least cheaper than ink and photo paper.
Because if I need to print out photographs, it's far cheaper to take the digital files to a place which can print them for a few cents each.
That's why I went with the Nexus, updated this week. =)
Wow, I had no idea USB OTG even existed to be honest, it's only recently I'm looking at anything Bluetooth.
Sadly, a quick google tells me I'd have to root it to use something like an external HD. Which kinda sucks.
I can assure you, there are atheists who have no interest in saying 'Christianity is superior' who look at some of these things and think "WTF???"
We also look at some of the things some Christians tell us they're convinced their god told them and think "WTF???"
Sometimes, I hear someone from a different religion saying what their god said, and I think "WTF???"
From the outside looking in, there's enough crazy and indefensible stuff to go around.
TFA seemed a little thin on details, but I believe he is being lashed for having said words to the effect of "people are free to believe or not believe" -- at which point what is being punished is the statement that you are in fact free to disbelieve.
And I'm suddenly finding myself thinking "gee, by the time I was 13 and had given up on the belief in god as something I inherited from my parents but couldn't get behind, does being publicly lashed or sentenced to death seem like a reasonable thing". And I'm forced to conclude that, no, it isn't.
Nobody has ever said they're a shining beacon of freedom, but they do have an awful lot of oil.
Just sayin'.
And probably concluded that either they didn't infringe, or that they could steamroll anyone else.
Or, they only did the search in the US and just assumed they'd be fine.
Because they have been saying they need to collect everything so that when they know what they're looking for it's already there.
They've been steadily expanding into the "record everything" domain for years now.
I see no reason to doubt that they're grabbing everything they can get and then deciding if it's pertinent later. That's been their stated goal for a long time.
Any product recommendations? The idea of being able to have a mouse to work with my Nexus while using VPN/RDP is really interesting for me -- but I got the impression you need a Bluetooth device which is more geared to mobile devices to make the pairing work. (I've only done cursory research into it at this point). I've got the keyboard, but haven't done enough digging into the mouse yet.
Indeed, as soon as I discovered I could get the VPN client and RDP clients installed, I ran out and got the keyboard.
Had to go out of town the other week for some family stuff on short notice, and it meant I at least had a minimum level of access to things. And all in something small enough to throw into my bag.
For that functionality alone, what I spent on my Nexus 7 was money well spent. Because it means my infotainment device can allow me to do some level of work if I really had to.
Zynga is publicly traded.
If Facebook is doing something which might lead to eating Zynga's lunch (so to speak), that's the issue -- it's certainly doubt it you own stock in Zynga.
And since the entire summary is about how this relates to Zynga, I assume that's the people the FUD applies to.
To me it's more "company gets successful on Facebook, others follow suit with Facebook's help, film at 11" kind of story. But, the long-term future of Zynga has zero interest for me.
This just means that Facebook is planning on helping develop more stuff for their platform in exchange for a cut of the money. And since Facebook want to make as much money as they can, it's pretty much what you'd expect.
And you're a smug wanker.
I have a finite amount of money, and you can bet your ass I'm going to economize where I can.
The world is fucked up, and I can't single-handedly fix it.
Go occupy your mom's basement or something, there Zorro.
Unless you live in a commune where you grow your own organic produce, weave your own cloth, and power the computer you're sitting at with a bicycle ... you're probably just as full of shit as the rest of us.
I beg to differ.
I bought a Nexus 7 a while back, and have subsequently bought the case with the Bluetooth keyboard. Separate from that, the Google keyboard app has "swipe to type" where you basically connect the dots of the word and it figures out what you intended. I didn't even know that was there until recently when I stumbled on it.
I've found with the ability to drag your finger around means I can type at what I'd call a reasonable speed, but definitely not my usual typing at a keyboard and a desk. It's not handwriting, but I can waggle my finger around where the letters are and type at a fast enough pace that it's usable. In fact, it's a pretty damned good compromise.
Sometimes, I'm willing to sacrifice a little speed in typing for the comfort of doing it from my lazy boy or my backyard. Or in an airport. Or in the hotel bar. Or avoiding bringing my laptop when I travel but still need to keep some minimum connectivity.
Nobody is suggesting a tablet is going to replace your desktop machine just yet, but it's getting to the point where you can at least use it for some stuff. The ability to VPN into work and remote desktop to my machine from my Nexus is nice to have as an option that can cut down how often I need to bring my laptop with me.
I don't see those accessories as hurting mobility. I see them as making the device more flexible and useful in more situations.
I can noodle about on it and not ever do anything but basic typing or viewing content. I can use the on screen keyboard to at least be able to respond to emails from a more mobile device in a comfy chair, and the drag and type allows for a decent speed. And I can put it on a desk, turn on the Bluetooth keyboard, and have access to a small keyboard which is faster than the on-screen one. All without taking it out of the case that has the keyboard.
For what I paid for the Nexus, there's a ton of utility in that device for me.
It's at least a generation of technology away from being able to replace my desktop machine, but given that the latest version of the Nexus 7 is running at full HD. And a generation of technology is about a year or so now.
And given the Google is making that $40 thing that allows you to stream to a TV onto HDMI -- the technology exists that you could very quickly plug your tablet into your TV and with a wireless keyboard and mouse and turn pretty much any TV and tablet into a workstation.
A tablet isn't a PC. That's the point ... but it's definitely a computer, and it's definitely personal.
I keep hearing this on Slashdot, and I disagree. It's not the easiest form factor to use for some things, and has some limitations to it
My Nexus 7 lets me open a VPN connection, and remote desktop to a Windows machine. With a Bluetooth keyboard I can type without using the touch screen, and apparently you can buy a Bluetooth mouse for Android devices. It would be like a little tiny laptop -- not where I'd want to do a full days work, but when travelling it's at least nice to have a lightweight option instead of dragging my entire laptop.
Everyone says this, and then forgets that they're a small part of the market.
You're describing a fairly niche product ... not everyone is planning to draw engineering diagrams with a 0.2mm tip on a tablet. You aren't the entire market, and I suspect that most potential buyers of tablets would be thinking "I don't need that". I've seen small-tipped styluses for touch screens. Likely nowhere near 0.2mm.
But "wildly successful" can't come from the small chunk of the market for high-end professional tablets that can do the stuff you describe. At this rate, give it a few years and you'll end up there anyway. For now, they're mostly a small consumer device not intended for doing all of your work on.
And, when was the last time that happened? Microsoft has been doing "me too" for a VERY long time, and while they have occasionally brought something innovative to market (the Kinect for instance) it's often technology they've bought from someone else (the Kinect for instance).
I'm just not sure that as a company they're capable of doing that.
So I'm forced to conclude that Microsoft is either exceedingly out of touch with what consumers actually want, or they've lost a lot of good will over the years and people are deciding they don't want their products.
For years Microsoft has more or less allowed the hardware makers to keep up with the needs of running their stuff -- but it sounds like they're not willing to foot the bill (and carry the risk) for getting a Microsoft product to market.
Sounds like Windows RT is fast becoming a complete flop.
You know, the sad thing is since everyone's employers are fucking them over and making them part of this grand middle class which makes $10.50-$11.50/hour (or driving down wages through the use of H1Bs to try to move us there)... nobody has any money left to spend extra on buying things which support local businesses.
So at the end of the day if it comes down to stretching my dollars as far as I can ... well, fuck trying to make the world a better place. The book is cheaper, and I didn't pay shipping.
At the end of the day it's "I'm barely hanging onto mine, fuck the world". In this giant race to the bottom that is globalization, most if us are just trying to stay on the rung we're at.
And, yes, I'm aware that in the long run that's a lousy strategy, but in the long run, it looks like we're all fucked anyway. Wal Mart and Amazon are evil corporations, and I know that, but at the end of the day I still need to look out for my own shit. And if they can save me some money on what I'm buying that I can use for something else ... well, it's hard to overlook that.
An old form of "Grail" (as in holy).
And I think they overestimate just how much anybody else cares about this. #wasteoftime