One of those tablets became the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. It's a gorgeous little Honeycomb tablet (currently 3.2.1) with IPS widescreen display and a docking keyboard option. It uses the dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, and has a selection of ports you're unlikely to find all of on most other tablets: SDHC, microSDHC, miniHDMI, dual USB. Build quality is great and the color and texture are very nice. It has Flash and Netflix now, the full Google Android experience. The speakers are just awful, but there's really nothing bad about it otherwise. On Amazon 500+ people have given it an average of 4 stars. It's not been discounted much ever off its original $400, and appears to be selling quite well. I bought one and couldn't be happier about my return on investment - no fiddling with alternative flashing and rooting. It just works.
The next-gen version is likely to be one of the first quad-core "Kal-El" Tegra 3 tablets out this year, and rumor has it the one dock will work for both and battery life will be even better than the current 8-16 hours.
So not all of these were disastrous it appears. At least somebody got it right. I hear the Acer Iconia Tab is doing well too at its new $400 price point. Yes, the vast majority of the initial round of iPad challengers were quite wide of the mark. But we seem to be narrowing in on a family of choices that can move a lot of units at their various price points. Amazon's Kindle Fire looks to be interesting at $200.
There's a certain slashdot constituency that wants to paint Google as evil no matter what good works they do. You'll find their comments in this thread, and in the one where their datacenters went carbon-neutral. This can't be interpreted by anybody reasonable as an evil act - to expand the sphere of human knowlege by making visible to all ancient texts for free. These trolls do have modpoints now and then. By painting them as tinfoil-hat crowd in my little joke I foiled their little plot. There's usually little profit in going for "funny" here but this time it paid off.
It happens every day somewhere in this country. For most of them it's a chance to get their blood up in a charged environment so afterward they can couple up in the afterglow. Think of it as a cotillion for liberal arts majors, or the mating ritual of some bird.
The Pantelgraph, invented in 1865 and commercialized as a telefax service that year, predates even the telephone. I imagine some time in the ensuing century and a half a pack of religious scholars might have gained access to this commercial service if they wanted to.
Obviously to track and identify those with an interest in this material so they can sell that information, complete with maps and street view, to ancient aliens intent on probing and implanting their mind control chips. Don't be evil! What a joke.
Your argument has some issues. First, the speed of gravity is theoretically c. This can be proved experimentally sometime soon. Or was. I forget. Since entropy is ambiguous in this thread you forgave me I'm sure.
Neutrinos are believed to have mass of some kind, because they appear to experience time. Neutrinos are believed to cycle over time through electron, muon and tau neutrino flavors - and cycling at some time rate based on energy levels. If the mass of neutrinos is negative it becomes a different theoretical problem with neat solutions. The Neutrinos would be repelled by, rather than attracted by, gravity. Yes, causality remains a problem in this case if the speed of light is truly broken and the observation isn't an error, because of the potential for heavier particles of greater mass and potentially much greater speeds. The actualization of negative masses does help certain other aspects of the theory though. Perhaps the red-shift of neutrinos and their higher-order cousins caused the early FTL expansion of the universe, and they're what's now slowing it down. In that case the missing mass in the universe is the negative mass of the neutrinos that expanded the universe faster than c on their way out and are now opposing the expansion of the universe with their negative mass. That would make the net mass of the universe exactly zero, which would clean up a lot of mess in the math. Energy then becomes the potential between mass and negative mass, the speed of light the dividing line between (which makes sense, as light is massless energy). Energy becomes the attracting force that pulls the negative and positive masses together again in the end. The gravity force becomes the equivalent of energy shifted into the mass dimension. Our entire universe becomes a temporary twitch in higher-order math: a ripple in dimensions beyond our ken - a single bubble in a fleck of foam on the crest of a wave on an endless sea made turbulent by winds beyond our imagining, that blooms once and bursts or shrinks again, absorbed by an uncaring sea. Its duration would be the level of incursion of one higher-order plane on another.
Since the neutrinos and their higher-order negative mass FTL cousins experience time in what we would consider the reverse then naturally our big bang was their big crunch. Our big crunch will be their big bang. It would make sense that the positive masses exactly equal the negative masses, that the highest density of mass in this negative mass universe is exactly the same magnitude of ours (galactic core black holes with negative mass) and that though from our current view of time their mass inhibits ours by being outside our known universe's perimeter pressing it in, from their point of view we are the negative mass preventing the expansion of their universe, and presently pressing it in toward its end. Time starts and as the masses and negative masses disassociate on their grand loop, time slows until it reaches some apogee prescribed by its cause and stops, and then reverses gaining speed until it meets its opposite mirror and stops. It's grand symmetry, and it would make perfect sense if my perfect mirror were posting this comment on gro.todhsals out there somewhere, though it's not necessary for that to be true for the math to work out.
This may do away with the the cyclic inversion theory, or "string of beads" because time itself loops back with its opposite and the beginning is also the end. There may be exactly one, which cleans up a lot more math.
Really, who needs causality anyway? It's getting in the way of a lot of interesting stuff.
If the mass of neutrinos is an imaginary number, well, things get a little fractal from there as the picture gets more beautiful and more inscrutable.
With Android Marketplaces there is a fee, terms and conditions. If they want to offer it on those terms they have to roll their own app store, and Google is not likely to build their apps for it. There doesn't have to be any dark motive to playing by the rules.
HP donates the kernel.org servers and they always have. And Linus' personal development gear sometimes. They push a lot of gear on the kernel team, in the prerelease phase. They employ hundreds of engineers, perhaps thousands, to validate their gear against Linux and submit patches upstream. Usually just to fix their gear before release because if it has a problem with Linux it's usually broke, but bugs in Linux are found too. They get good value from this because when HP explores corner cases with Linux and something breaks it's easier to get right down to the lines of code right before the thing wrong and examine the machine states that led to the failure. Linux is actually used to make the machines run Windows services better too, because the things that go wrong in Linux usually would go wrong in Windows too but would be harder to find.
They have Linux support for every server they sell, and nearly every printer too. RedHat and Suse are validation targets that must be met before a server is launched. They have their own Linux distribution for thin clients. Their in-house LeftHand San (and Virtual San Appliance) run Linux. Their million-dollar fileserver in a rack run Lustre on Unix or Linux.
HP's own diagnostic CD they used to ship with every server, but which is now just a download usually, is also a custom Linux distribution. They have their own Honest to God Unix as well - HP-UX - so they don't have to do these things. But they do.
HP didn't come to have 31% of the top 500 supercomputer installations in the world by accident. They didn't become the top server vendor in the world by accident. It's their rock-solid Linux support that helped put them there when others didn't bother to try - because a metric boatload of servers run Linux and Linux server buyers know better than to get their gear from Dell. On the server side the best answer usually wins.
These open-source installations have huge things to do with HP's profitability and productivity because servers have fair margins and they almost always get high-margin support uplifts and services besides. They try pretty hard not to have Windows-only components in their business desktops and laptops too. They don't try as hard as they could on the consumer side. But they have little choice about that.
On the consumer side it's different. Even after they've had the thing built in the same depressing factory iPads are built in, reducing their component costs to the bare minimum with world-beating economies of scale and loading them up with every bearable form of shovelware, adware and crudware, they still lose money on every single unit. It's only when they add in the "co-marketing" dollars from Microsoft that they get for putting "HP recommends Windows 7" on every page of their website, by including Windows in their advertising and on every machine, and so on, that they turn a profit at all. And it's the same across the industry. When HP adds in these monies and it makes five points of operating margin in a good year, that's a huge win. Some OEM companies actually lose money every year (not the same companies every year, of course). Naturally this means that whether or not a PC OEM makes money in any given year is entirely at the whim of Microsoft's marketing department. That's why HP, at the pinnacle of success in client PCs wants out of this game. By being on top HP's a target for Microsoft to trim their sails, and Microsoft wants leverage on the server side of things. Better to separate the two so that in at least one you can drive progress and establish your brand - and get good margins.
At the executive level there are some confused folk, as there often are. But HP has some engineers yet that know a good solution when they see it.
Now if their web team would find W3.org and build their websites and management software to dish well-established standards, that would be nice. Guys, believe it or not coding to the internationally accepted standards is actually easier and more effective than the proprietary alternatives. Also, you can make me use IE - but I'll hate you for choosing to do so.
There are things to worry about. And then there are irrational fears. If you take a stroll past auto accidents down the lane past flu pandemic then terrorist attack then nuclear meltdown and zombie apocalypse then 4km asteroid strike, you'll arrive at the valley where this little terror of yours scampers in verdant fields frolicking with such mythical wonders as sexy slashdot nymphomaniacs, honest politicians, and Steve Ballmer's sense of humor.
It's not most pockets yet. It's just drawing even with iOS on iPhone for installed base now. But new users? When somebody opens their pocket and drops in a smartphone for the first time? Yes, in that case more than half of of them are now Android sporting a Linux kernel. Samsung's Bada can also use a Linux kernel too, or one derived from BSD.
For some reason their competitors' toolkits just aren't as flexible, as capable, as compatible. Maybe it's because other toolkit developers are idiots. Or maybe there's another reason why others find it difficult to compete with the OS developer in creating development tools.
The thing is if you read the article, Microsoft isn't having any impact on Google at all. They're just killing everybody else. When they stop dumping money on this bonfire, where are all those people going to go? Google.
Slashdot Mirror
One of those tablets became the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. It's a gorgeous little Honeycomb tablet (currently 3.2.1) with IPS widescreen display and a docking keyboard option. It uses the dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, and has a selection of ports you're unlikely to find all of on most other tablets: SDHC, microSDHC, miniHDMI, dual USB. Build quality is great and the color and texture are very nice. It has Flash and Netflix now, the full Google Android experience. The speakers are just awful, but there's really nothing bad about it otherwise. On Amazon 500+ people have given it an average of 4 stars. It's not been discounted much ever off its original $400, and appears to be selling quite well. I bought one and couldn't be happier about my return on investment - no fiddling with alternative flashing and rooting. It just works.
The next-gen version is likely to be one of the first quad-core "Kal-El" Tegra 3 tablets out this year, and rumor has it the one dock will work for both and battery life will be even better than the current 8-16 hours.
So not all of these were disastrous it appears. At least somebody got it right. I hear the Acer Iconia Tab is doing well too at its new $400 price point. Yes, the vast majority of the initial round of iPad challengers were quite wide of the mark. But we seem to be narrowing in on a family of choices that can move a lot of units at their various price points. Amazon's Kindle Fire looks to be interesting at $200.
He's in the "all the traffic will bear" business. Get over it. Get to forking.
... But they bought us a free and open codec to replace it with.
I hear they are fast tracking it. If all goes well, 4/2012.
There's a certain slashdot constituency that wants to paint Google as evil no matter what good works they do. You'll find their comments in this thread, and in the one where their datacenters went carbon-neutral. This can't be interpreted by anybody reasonable as an evil act - to expand the sphere of human knowlege by making visible to all ancient texts for free. These trolls do have modpoints now and then. By painting them as tinfoil-hat crowd in my little joke I foiled their little plot. There's usually little profit in going for "funny" here but this time it paid off.
It happens every day somewhere in this country. For most of them it's a chance to get their blood up in a charged environment so afterward they can couple up in the afterglow. Think of it as a cotillion for liberal arts majors, or the mating ritual of some bird.
'Tweren't me. This particular nutty professor was a bit more imortant than me, relatively.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- A. Nutty Professor.
The Pantelgraph, invented in 1865 and commercialized as a telefax service that year, predates even the telephone. I imagine some time in the ensuing century and a half a pack of religious scholars might have gained access to this commercial service if they wanted to.
Obviously to track and identify those with an interest in this material so they can sell that information, complete with maps and street view, to ancient aliens intent on probing and implanting their mind control chips. Don't be evil! What a joke.
Your argument has some issues. First, the speed of gravity is theoretically c. This can be proved experimentally sometime soon. Or was. I forget. Since entropy is ambiguous in this thread you forgave me I'm sure.
Neutrinos are believed to have mass of some kind, because they appear to experience time. Neutrinos are believed to cycle over time through electron, muon and tau neutrino flavors - and cycling at some time rate based on energy levels. If the mass of neutrinos is negative it becomes a different theoretical problem with neat solutions. The Neutrinos would be repelled by, rather than attracted by, gravity. Yes, causality remains a problem in this case if the speed of light is truly broken and the observation isn't an error, because of the potential for heavier particles of greater mass and potentially much greater speeds. The actualization of negative masses does help certain other aspects of the theory though. Perhaps the red-shift of neutrinos and their higher-order cousins caused the early FTL expansion of the universe, and they're what's now slowing it down. In that case the missing mass in the universe is the negative mass of the neutrinos that expanded the universe faster than c on their way out and are now opposing the expansion of the universe with their negative mass. That would make the net mass of the universe exactly zero, which would clean up a lot of mess in the math. Energy then becomes the potential between mass and negative mass, the speed of light the dividing line between (which makes sense, as light is massless energy). Energy becomes the attracting force that pulls the negative and positive masses together again in the end. The gravity force becomes the equivalent of energy shifted into the mass dimension. Our entire universe becomes a temporary twitch in higher-order math: a ripple in dimensions beyond our ken - a single bubble in a fleck of foam on the crest of a wave on an endless sea made turbulent by winds beyond our imagining, that blooms once and bursts or shrinks again, absorbed by an uncaring sea. Its duration would be the level of incursion of one higher-order plane on another.
Since the neutrinos and their higher-order negative mass FTL cousins experience time in what we would consider the reverse then naturally our big bang was their big crunch. Our big crunch will be their big bang. It would make sense that the positive masses exactly equal the negative masses, that the highest density of mass in this negative mass universe is exactly the same magnitude of ours (galactic core black holes with negative mass) and that though from our current view of time their mass inhibits ours by being outside our known universe's perimeter pressing it in, from their point of view we are the negative mass preventing the expansion of their universe, and presently pressing it in toward its end. Time starts and as the masses and negative masses disassociate on their grand loop, time slows until it reaches some apogee prescribed by its cause and stops, and then reverses gaining speed until it meets its opposite mirror and stops. It's grand symmetry, and it would make perfect sense if my perfect mirror were posting this comment on gro.todhsals out there somewhere, though it's not necessary for that to be true for the math to work out.
This may do away with the the cyclic inversion theory, or "string of beads" because time itself loops back with its opposite and the beginning is also the end. There may be exactly one, which cleans up a lot more math.
Really, who needs causality anyway? It's getting in the way of a lot of interesting stuff.
If the mass of neutrinos is an imaginary number, well, things get a little fractal from there as the picture gets more beautiful and more inscrutable.
There is a tunnel and Italy did contribute the money to build it. They drilled it with neutrinos. It's a very narrow tunnel.
I believe in the tunnel. I just believe it's only a few neutrinos wide.
With Android Marketplaces there is a fee, terms and conditions. If they want to offer it on those terms they have to roll their own app store, and Google is not likely to build their apps for it. There doesn't have to be any dark motive to playing by the rules.
That's just crazy talk.
HP donates the kernel.org servers and they always have. And Linus' personal development gear sometimes. They push a lot of gear on the kernel team, in the prerelease phase. They employ hundreds of engineers, perhaps thousands, to validate their gear against Linux and submit patches upstream. Usually just to fix their gear before release because if it has a problem with Linux it's usually broke, but bugs in Linux are found too. They get good value from this because when HP explores corner cases with Linux and something breaks it's easier to get right down to the lines of code right before the thing wrong and examine the machine states that led to the failure. Linux is actually used to make the machines run Windows services better too, because the things that go wrong in Linux usually would go wrong in Windows too but would be harder to find.
They have Linux support for every server they sell, and nearly every printer too. RedHat and Suse are validation targets that must be met before a server is launched. They have their own Linux distribution for thin clients. Their in-house LeftHand San (and Virtual San Appliance) run Linux. Their million-dollar fileserver in a rack run Lustre on Unix or Linux.
HP's own diagnostic CD they used to ship with every server, but which is now just a download usually, is also a custom Linux distribution. They have their own Honest to God Unix as well - HP-UX - so they don't have to do these things. But they do.
HP didn't come to have 31% of the top 500 supercomputer installations in the world by accident. They didn't become the top server vendor in the world by accident. It's their rock-solid Linux support that helped put them there when others didn't bother to try - because a metric boatload of servers run Linux and Linux server buyers know better than to get their gear from Dell. On the server side the best answer usually wins.
These open-source installations have huge things to do with HP's profitability and productivity because servers have fair margins and they almost always get high-margin support uplifts and services besides. They try pretty hard not to have Windows-only components in their business desktops and laptops too. They don't try as hard as they could on the consumer side. But they have little choice about that.
On the consumer side it's different. Even after they've had the thing built in the same depressing factory iPads are built in, reducing their component costs to the bare minimum with world-beating economies of scale and loading them up with every bearable form of shovelware, adware and crudware, they still lose money on every single unit. It's only when they add in the "co-marketing" dollars from Microsoft that they get for putting "HP recommends Windows 7" on every page of their website, by including Windows in their advertising and on every machine, and so on, that they turn a profit at all. And it's the same across the industry. When HP adds in these monies and it makes five points of operating margin in a good year, that's a huge win. Some OEM companies actually lose money every year (not the same companies every year, of course). Naturally this means that whether or not a PC OEM makes money in any given year is entirely at the whim of Microsoft's marketing department. That's why HP, at the pinnacle of success in client PCs wants out of this game. By being on top HP's a target for Microsoft to trim their sails, and Microsoft wants leverage on the server side of things. Better to separate the two so that in at least one you can drive progress and establish your brand - and get good margins.
At the executive level there are some confused folk, as there often are. But HP has some engineers yet that know a good solution when they see it.
Now if their web team would find W3.org and build their websites and management software to dish well-established standards, that would be nice. Guys, believe it or not coding to the internationally accepted standards is actually easier and more effective than the proprietary alternatives. Also, you can make me use IE - but I'll hate you for choosing to do so.
As odd as it sounds, some people are homeless because they prefer to be homeless. There's no accounting for taste.
Interesting times ahead.
There are things to worry about. And then there are irrational fears. If you take a stroll past auto accidents down the lane past flu pandemic then terrorist attack then nuclear meltdown and zombie apocalypse then 4km asteroid strike, you'll arrive at the valley where this little terror of yours scampers in verdant fields frolicking with such mythical wonders as sexy slashdot nymphomaniacs, honest politicians, and Steve Ballmer's sense of humor.
It's not most pockets yet. It's just drawing even with iOS on iPhone for installed base now. But new users? When somebody opens their pocket and drops in a smartphone for the first time? Yes, in that case more than half of of them are now Android sporting a Linux kernel. Samsung's Bada can also use a Linux kernel too, or one derived from BSD.
For some reason their competitors' toolkits just aren't as flexible, as capable, as compatible. Maybe it's because other toolkit developers are idiots. Or maybe there's another reason why others find it difficult to compete with the OS developer in creating development tools.
The thing is if you read the article, Microsoft isn't having any impact on Google at all. They're just killing everybody else. When they stop dumping money on this bonfire, where are all those people going to go? Google.
It's a network service. Who cares what it runs on?
Enjoy the ride until you get voted off the island.
We can't use Confessional. It's taken for the other thing.