You win red herring of the day! A vague fictional scenario where somehow the laptop isn't working correctly without any details.
Well, here's one scenario: Google decide that they're going to give all of their web apps a new, fresh look, rebrand "Google Docs" as "Google Drive", completely change the layout of Mail and start asking you to provide a mobile number and second email address for password retrieval. Because its all in the cloud, this is inflicted on all users simultaneously (maybe there's an option to stick with the old version for a limited time, if mom spots the link).
(For the benefit of anybody who doesn't use Google apps - all these things have happened before, and will happen again).
I guarantee that will completely flummox the stereotypical (but highly recognisable) "mom" of which we are speaking.
This is a huge problem with the web in general and non-techy, generally older people who rely on written notes and rote learning to operate computers - they have to re-learn everything whenever a company re-designs its website for no adequately explored reason.
At least Microsoft want you to pay them money before they'll let you have the new version of their software with the screwed-over UI and many people happily keep running familiar versions.
The point is having a relatively locked down device for my retired mom to use. Point, click, automatic updates, automatic backups of data, and relative immunity to hacks.
...and is your mom going to do anything that would need a higher spec than the current, cheap Chromebooks? Does she understand that she can't get most of her data unless she is connected to the internet? Does her WiFi reach the conservatory...?
Meanwhile, any modern OS can be configured in lock-down mode, and if there is any evidence of a demand for this, MS, Apple and co. are going to start shipping machines in this state (if we're really, really lucky, they'll still let us unlock them if we want).
I'm not saying that Chromebooks are a bad idea per se but that high-powered (and consequently higher cost) Chromebooks are pointless.
There are 6 billion people of which 0.3 live in the USA.
Except more like 20%-ish of the world speak English as a first or second language. You can maybe be forgiven for excluding the UK, Australia, bits of Canada and other officially English-speaking countries (and for assuming all USAians speak English) but its the second-language speakers who make the difference. Getting a good English translation is critical to success - everything else is secondary (unless you want to break into China, but I think we're mainly talking about producers who want to break out of China).
None of the make the software bad, just a tad annoying.
Its not a good sign if the producer can't at least take the trouble to get the text checked by a native speaker. Heck, if you can't afford to employ a professional translator, running the text through Google Translate and then passing it to a reasonably literate English speaker to fix would be better than some of the Engrish out there.
Which ever way you're translating, you need someone who can understand the source language but is skilled in the target language. I think the reason we get so much Engrish (...and EUglish, the standard language for European Union documents) is all those EFL speakers out there make it too easy to do the reverse.
PC manufacturers may try to corral Chromebook, much like Netbooks, by setting frustratingly low hardware expectations.
...because unless Chromebooks are significantly cheaper than a regular computer running Windows/OX X or Linux, where's the point? When/if almost everything has moved to the cloud, Chromebook-type machines will make a lot of sense. In the meantime, a regular computer gives you the best of both worlds - you can run native applications and fire up a browser to use web apps.
Chromebooks should be most useful in corporate environments where the cost of maintaining hundreds of individual OS installations is a big issue - but such organisations are going to be conservative about moving to cloud-based applications, and typically rely on lots of legacy software...
And besides it isn't against the law to put on eyeliner and talk on the phone if she does it safely...
First, I don't think it would be hard to convince a court that it is impossible to do that safely.
Plus, it is probably easier for a cop to spot that a car is driving erratically than it is to see if the driver is holding a phone.
Then, in the Google Glass case, several people have pointed out that if used sensibly as a HUD it could actually improve safety.
Finally, if you just put a simplistic blanket ban on phones then you invite a lot of soft-targetting by cops. Gridlock? Grab a donut and stroll down the row of square-wheeled cars and play spot the cellphone. If there's a handy service lane on the road, just cruise down 5 miles of stationary traffic and you're bound to pick up a few people phoning in late. Ker-ching. Making gadget usage just part of the evidence for dangerous driving and you avoid that.
If only there were laws about "dangerous driving" or "reckless driving" or (here in the UK) "Driving without due care and attention" so that the cops could book anybody who clearly wasn't in control of their vehicle, whether they were eating spaghetti, doing their makeup, performing a lewd act with their passenger, coding in FORTH using a Microwriter chord keyboard* or using their quantum degrebulator. Then there would be no need to come up with a new, specific, law for every new gadget that was invented.
If only.
Mp>(* to keep your other hand free for operating your mobile phone, of course...)
No, no, no! It can't be an OS without a graphical user interface, web browser, email client, calendar, media player, typesetting system, at least three text editors, five or more programming languages, drivers for every peripheral known to man and a collection of games. Heck Apple's so-called "OS X" barely qualifies, lacking an integrated implementation of "Minesweeper".
Even with 'modular' operating systems, if enabling file sharing doesn't install Ghostscript and X11 then something is very wrong.
An OS without all these is like a text editor without Lisp and Eliza.
There was a version of Dirk Gently made for BBC quite recently - followed up by a series 'inspired by' the books. As stand alone items they were (in my view) pretty good and worth watching, but not at all faithful to the original text.
Agree - I much preferred the bits of the series where they weren't using bits and pieces from the books. The great fun of the books is the way all the ridiculous plot elements and red herrings all get pulled together logically (for an imaginary value of 'logic') in the end.
However, I don't think they had anything like the budget needed to create electric monks, ghosts, giant invisible spaceships, primordial Earths or pop in on Coleridge so they were probably right to keep it simple and not make a Zaphod's head of it. And I expect that Valhalla was all booked up by the Harry Potter crew when they were shooting it:-)
... a strong Brownian Motion producer, which is essential for the Infinite Improbability Drive which powers Zaphod's stolen spaceship, the Heart of Gold.
...plus all that fun with Arthur's attempt to get a cup of tea from the Nutrimatic machine.
Oh, and the title of the Dirk Gently book was taken from the third HHGTTG novel, anyway.
Well, yes, I did actually suggest that in my post.
That's one reason why a luxury car like the Tesla doesn't make that much sense, other than for someone who has the space, money and inclination to run two expensive cars.
However, even with a "short range" car you want one with enough, predictable range that you can use it without worrying about charge all the time. 50 miles sounds fine for commuter use, but not if its likely to plummet to plummet in sub-optimal conditions.
Even cars based on petrol will NOT reach their maximum range if you drive it in a nonoptimal way, why would you expect an electric one to be any different?
The difference is this:
Petrol car doesn't make its maximum range: as soon as it starts getting below about 5% full, spend 5 minutes refuelling at any filling station. If the station is busy, spend an extra 10 minutes queueing. If you get caught short (which is stupid because of the convenience of refuelling) then call out the rescue service with a can of petrol and you're back on the road in an hour or two.
Electric car doesn't make its maximum range: as soon as the gauge drops below 40% or so, start worrying about whether you can make your destination ans, if not,where you are going to re-charge. If you're lucky enough to find a rapid charger, wait an hour while it recharges. If you have to use a regular charger, book into a hotel. If the charger is busy, you're screwed. If you get caught short (more forgivable considering the hassle of finding a charging point and waiting to charge) , then call out the tow truck (wait an hour or two) get towed to the nearest charging point (may take a while) then wait an hour, or overnight if you can't find a rapid charger.
Consequently, the "maximum range" is a much, much bigger deal for an electric car than it is for petrol. Basically, these things are "second cars" for commuters who do a few tens of miles a day and can keep them topped up in their garage overnight. Only an obsessive hypermiler would want one for long trips.
I'm not completely dissing the idea of an electric car: personally, I could almost see myself using an electric car most of the year (but not something as pricey as a Tesla) and hiring a petrol car for long trips. Or how about a plug-in hybrid with a detachable petrol engine (so you didn't waste energy carrying a big block of metal on battery-range trips)?
There is no justification for the $10/year cost of domain names
Good domain names are a limited resource (sure there are a gazillion possible combinations but nobody wants to be kz67uip95zqtn.com or johnsmithfrompowercablenebraskabutnottheonthatlivesonwashingtonstreet.org). Until we live in some post-scarcity socialist nirvana where our disputes can be mediated by infinitely wise AIs then they will have a value. (...and even then, look at how long the names get in Banks's Culture books!)
If domain names were free, or lasted forever for a small fee, then the cybersquatters would be busy running scripts to systematically register every likely combination of English words , and you'd all have to buy back your domains from them for whatever they wanted to charge. The domain name market is Wild West enough at the moment, thanks very much.
At least a monopoly has some sort of accountability.
Unless there's some sneaky bit of small print in the bill that amounts to "unless your name is Microsoft" then I agree.
Personally I have no problems with using cloud services but I respect those who would prefer not to be 'watched' and corporations certainly shouldn't be pushing ads to kids (...and going by other posts here, Google don't).
Even without ads, it is in the interest of cloud providers to offer education a good deal on their services - all those young hearts and minds.
There is no reason why the European Commissioner for Competition can't go and levy the same sorts of fines against Google and Apple for the same reasons.
Except Apple doesn't have anything like the sort of near-monopoly on "personal computing" that Microsoft had back in the 1990s when the original infringement occurred. To argue otherwise you have to start making dubious narrow definitions like "high-end smartphones and tablets" - and then you're dealing with new market segments that Apple created themselves, and which are showing every sign of opening up as the competition gets its act together.
Plus, I haven't noticed Google introducing lots of features in its search and maps services that only work on Chrome - or trying to restrict Android to Google services/software only (there are a ton of alternatives for everything in the Play store).
Finally, if the original case were re-considered today, it might not fly - it is now expected that an OS will come with web browsers/HTML components and a shedload of other stuff as standard. Back then, web browsers were a new-ish application with companies like Opera and Netscape seeking to make money from them (ISTR Opera cost money, whereas Netscape was a loss-leader to sell other services),
I'm looking around and I can't see Win8 having a significant percent of the market (maybe I can't see because it's night time, but anyway...) what monopoly are you talking about?
The one that will exist once it becomes difficult to buy a PC with Windows 7, more and more new software/upgraded requires Windows 8 and the legions of Windows 7 and XP users sigh, give up and upgrade to Windows 8.
The one that means that so many people are putting up with the horrible ribbon interface in Office because they need to be able to exchange files reliably with other Office users.
Brand new $329 product sells faster than $499 product with minor spec bump! Film at 11!
(Comparison with iPad 2 is silly - it is an old product which, has lower specs than the Mini, has the same number of pixels as the Mini, still costs $70 more and will probably be discontinued soon).
Meanwhile, the first generation of 7", 16:9 tablets of which his Steveness was speaking didn't exactly sell like hotcakes. The format has since been popularised by Amazon and Google offering extra cheap 7" tablets firmly aimed at media consumption (which they may be treating as loss-leaders).
Its also worth bearing in mind that the Mini isn't a 7" 16:9 tablet, its a 7.9" 4:3 tablet with the same number of pixels as the original iPad. That's a non-trivial difference especially when (e.g.) you want to type in landscape format.
*not that I use ipmi, but its presence marks a serious machine room server
I think the moral of the story is that there are lots of individuals and small businesses that don't need a "serious machine room server" .
Consumer-grade hardware, these days, has a pretty good MTBF. If your business depends on many inter-related servers being up 24/7, and downtime costs $100,000 an hour then those MTBFs will stack up to an unacceptable degree so ECC, redundant power, hot-swappable raid drives are essential.
If your business depends on hosting lots of co-located or rented machines, and your only obligation is to keep the network up and, on request, to power-cycle a machine or swap out a faulty machine with a good one (making.restoring backup can be the customer's responsibility), then the calculation changes somewhat.
If a Mac Mini blows, one customer has downtime. If a "serious" server hosting 20 VPSs fails (ECC and redundancy won't catch everything) then 20 customers have downtime.
Put simply, if you don't put as many eggs in the basket, you can risk using a cheaper basket.
Not to mention that multitasking is mostly about RAM, since on Android processes in the background don't usually do all that much work.
This is changing - the Note II has a split-screen mode that lets you have two applications running side-by-side and can also play video in a small window overlaid on another app.
The first one you link to comes with Android 2.2 FFS.
Sorry - I meant to link to the Galaxy SIII Mini, not that one. (While choice is good, the 10 zillion similarly-named models that Samsung produce show that you can have too much of a good thing).
However, smaller phones have less space for batteries, less pixels to wrangle and will typically be used for less demanding apps, and are less suitable for multitasking - so less powerful processors make sense.
Just got my a GalaXy Note ll two days ago. writing this with the stylist.
Yes... we can tell:-)
(Hint - try enabling 'complete recognition' - this is squirrelled away under Settings > Personal > Language and Input > Samsung keyboard > Handwriting - I find it more reliable and makes catching mistakes easier).
What if phones came in a range of shapes and sizes so you could choose the size that suited you.
If only we lived in such a world...
NB: Samsung links for illustrative purposes only - different sized phones are available from other manufacturers - I believe Apple will sell you a rather fine phone if you believe that there is Only One True Phone Size. Odd, because Apple offer every other product line they do in a range of form factors...
Seriously folks - the right size of phone depends on your personal priorities. If you're a heavy voice/txt user then maybe a smaller, thumb-friendly phone is for you. If you only send the occasional voice call or txt, but want web, email, navigation, games in your pocket then phablets are more attractive. The Galaxy Note II is about the minimum size to be useful with a stylus and/or split screen multitasking - but maybe you don't want to use those (Samsung's split-screen multitasking is impressive, but I admit that the only reason I ever use it is to show people how impressive it is...)
No, it is not misspelled: initially they put the iPad on the hood
Hood? That's the leaky fabric bit you get on top of convertibles. Perhaps you mean "bonnet"?
Silly Americans naming the metal flap that covers a car engine after a type of headwear... oh, wait...:-)
Meanwhile, if they're going to test these things in Oxford I hope that they're fitting the car with an industrial strength bike-catcher and an AI that can cope with one-way systems designed by M.C. Escher.
Slashdot Mirror
You win red herring of the day! A vague fictional scenario where somehow the laptop isn't working correctly without any details.
Well, here's one scenario: Google decide that they're going to give all of their web apps a new, fresh look, rebrand "Google Docs" as "Google Drive", completely change the layout of Mail and start asking you to provide a mobile number and second email address for password retrieval. Because its all in the cloud, this is inflicted on all users simultaneously (maybe there's an option to stick with the old version for a limited time, if mom spots the link).
(For the benefit of anybody who doesn't use Google apps - all these things have happened before, and will happen again).
I guarantee that will completely flummox the stereotypical (but highly recognisable) "mom" of which we are speaking.
This is a huge problem with the web in general and non-techy, generally older people who rely on written notes and rote learning to operate computers - they have to re-learn everything whenever a company re-designs its website for no adequately explored reason.
At least Microsoft want you to pay them money before they'll let you have the new version of their software with the screwed-over UI and many people happily keep running familiar versions.
The point is having a relatively locked down device for my retired mom to use. Point, click, automatic updates, automatic backups of data, and relative immunity to hacks.
...and is your mom going to do anything that would need a higher spec than the current, cheap Chromebooks? Does she understand that she can't get most of her data unless she is connected to the internet? Does her WiFi reach the conservatory...?
Meanwhile, any modern OS can be configured in lock-down mode, and if there is any evidence of a demand for this, MS, Apple and co. are going to start shipping machines in this state (if we're really, really lucky, they'll still let us unlock them if we want).
I'm not saying that Chromebooks are a bad idea per se but that high-powered (and consequently higher cost) Chromebooks are pointless.
There are 6 billion people of which 0.3 live in the USA.
Except more like 20%-ish of the world speak English as a first or second language. You can maybe be forgiven for excluding the UK, Australia, bits of Canada and other officially English-speaking countries (and for assuming all USAians speak English) but its the second-language speakers who make the difference. Getting a good English translation is critical to success - everything else is secondary (unless you want to break into China, but I think we're mainly talking about producers who want to break out of China).
None of the make the software bad, just a tad annoying.
Its not a good sign if the producer can't at least take the trouble to get the text checked by a native speaker. Heck, if you can't afford to employ a professional translator, running the text through Google Translate and then passing it to a reasonably literate English speaker to fix would be better than some of the Engrish out there.
Which ever way you're translating, you need someone who can understand the source language but is skilled in the target language. I think the reason we get so much Engrish (...and EUglish, the standard language for European Union documents) is all those EFL speakers out there make it too easy to do the reverse.
PC manufacturers may try to corral Chromebook, much like Netbooks, by setting frustratingly low hardware expectations.
...because unless Chromebooks are significantly cheaper than a regular computer running Windows/OX X or Linux, where's the point? When/if almost everything has moved to the cloud, Chromebook-type machines will make a lot of sense. In the meantime, a regular computer gives you the best of both worlds - you can run native applications and fire up a browser to use web apps.
Chromebooks should be most useful in corporate environments where the cost of maintaining hundreds of individual OS installations is a big issue - but such organisations are going to be conservative about moving to cloud-based applications, and typically rely on lots of legacy software...
And besides it isn't against the law to put on eyeliner and talk on the phone if she does it safely...
First, I don't think it would be hard to convince a court that it is impossible to do that safely.
Plus, it is probably easier for a cop to spot that a car is driving erratically than it is to see if the driver is holding a phone.
Then, in the Google Glass case, several people have pointed out that if used sensibly as a HUD it could actually improve safety.
Finally, if you just put a simplistic blanket ban on phones then you invite a lot of soft-targetting by cops. Gridlock? Grab a donut and stroll down the row of square-wheeled cars and play spot the cellphone. If there's a handy service lane on the road, just cruise down 5 miles of stationary traffic and you're bound to pick up a few people phoning in late. Ker-ching. Making gadget usage just part of the evidence for dangerous driving and you avoid that.
So... emacs?
Nah - its a good OS but the default text editor isn't really up to snuff.
(Of course, I'll lose my faith in geekdom if nobody has implemented [insert rival text editor here] in Emacs).
If only there were laws about "dangerous driving" or "reckless driving" or (here in the UK) "Driving without due care and attention" so that the cops could book anybody who clearly wasn't in control of their vehicle, whether they were eating spaghetti, doing their makeup, performing a lewd act with their passenger, coding in FORTH using a Microwriter chord keyboard* or using their quantum degrebulator. Then there would be no need to come up with a new, specific, law for every new gadget that was invented.
If only. Mp>(* to keep your other hand free for operating your mobile phone, of course...)
No, no, no! It can't be an OS without a graphical user interface, web browser, email client, calendar, media player, typesetting system, at least three text editors, five or more programming languages, drivers for every peripheral known to man and a collection of games. Heck Apple's so-called "OS X" barely qualifies, lacking an integrated implementation of "Minesweeper".
Even with 'modular' operating systems, if enabling file sharing doesn't install Ghostscript and X11 then something is very wrong.
An OS without all these is like a text editor without Lisp and Eliza.
There was a version of Dirk Gently made for BBC quite recently - followed up by a series 'inspired by' the books. As stand alone items they were (in my view) pretty good and worth watching, but not at all faithful to the original text.
Agree - I much preferred the bits of the series where they weren't using bits and pieces from the books. The great fun of the books is the way all the ridiculous plot elements and red herrings all get pulled together logically (for an imaginary value of 'logic') in the end.
However, I don't think they had anything like the budget needed to create electric monks, ghosts, giant invisible spaceships, primordial Earths or pop in on Coleridge so they were probably right to keep it simple and not make a Zaphod's head of it. And I expect that Valhalla was all booked up by the Harry Potter crew when they were shooting it :-)
... a strong Brownian Motion producer, which is essential for the Infinite Improbability Drive which powers Zaphod's stolen spaceship, the Heart of Gold.
...plus all that fun with Arthur's attempt to get a cup of tea from the Nutrimatic machine.
Oh, and the title of the Dirk Gently book was taken from the third HHGTTG novel, anyway.
The BBC video series was also terrible.
...but the utterly inspired "computer" animated sequences accompanying the narration made up for it.
Well, yes, I did actually suggest that in my post.
That's one reason why a luxury car like the Tesla doesn't make that much sense, other than for someone who has the space, money and inclination to run two expensive cars.
However, even with a "short range" car you want one with enough, predictable range that you can use it without worrying about charge all the time. 50 miles sounds fine for commuter use, but not if its likely to plummet to plummet in sub-optimal conditions.
Even cars based on petrol will NOT reach their maximum range if you drive it in a nonoptimal way, why would you expect an electric one to be any different?
The difference is this:
Petrol car doesn't make its maximum range: as soon as it starts getting below about 5% full, spend 5 minutes refuelling at any filling station. If the station is busy, spend an extra 10 minutes queueing. If you get caught short (which is stupid because of the convenience of refuelling) then call out the rescue service with a can of petrol and you're back on the road in an hour or two.
Electric car doesn't make its maximum range: as soon as the gauge drops below 40% or so, start worrying about whether you can make your destination ans, if not,where you are going to re-charge. If you're lucky enough to find a rapid charger, wait an hour while it recharges. If you have to use a regular charger, book into a hotel. If the charger is busy, you're screwed. If you get caught short (more forgivable considering the hassle of finding a charging point and waiting to charge) , then call out the tow truck (wait an hour or two) get towed to the nearest charging point (may take a while) then wait an hour, or overnight if you can't find a rapid charger.
Consequently, the "maximum range" is a much, much bigger deal for an electric car than it is for petrol. Basically, these things are "second cars" for commuters who do a few tens of miles a day and can keep them topped up in their garage overnight. Only an obsessive hypermiler would want one for long trips.
I'm not completely dissing the idea of an electric car: personally, I could almost see myself using an electric car most of the year (but not something as pricey as a Tesla) and hiring a petrol car for long trips. Or how about a plug-in hybrid with a detachable petrol engine (so you didn't waste energy carrying a big block of metal on battery-range trips)?
There is no justification for the $10/year cost of domain names
Good domain names are a limited resource (sure there are a gazillion possible combinations but nobody wants to be kz67uip95zqtn.com or johnsmithfrompowercablenebraskabutnottheonthatlivesonwashingtonstreet.org). Until we live in some post-scarcity socialist nirvana where our disputes can be mediated by infinitely wise AIs then they will have a value. (...and even then, look at how long the names get in Banks's Culture books!)
If domain names were free, or lasted forever for a small fee, then the cybersquatters would be busy running scripts to systematically register every likely combination of English words , and you'd all have to buy back your domains from them for whatever they wanted to charge. The domain name market is Wild West enough at the moment, thanks very much.
At least a monopoly has some sort of accountability.
Unless there's some sneaky bit of small print in the bill that amounts to "unless your name is Microsoft" then I agree.
Personally I have no problems with using cloud services but I respect those who would prefer not to be 'watched' and corporations certainly shouldn't be pushing ads to kids (...and going by other posts here, Google don't).
Even without ads, it is in the interest of cloud providers to offer education a good deal on their services - all those young hearts and minds.
There is no reason why the European Commissioner for Competition can't go and levy the same sorts of fines against Google and Apple for the same reasons.
Except Apple doesn't have anything like the sort of near-monopoly on "personal computing" that Microsoft had back in the 1990s when the original infringement occurred. To argue otherwise you have to start making dubious narrow definitions like "high-end smartphones and tablets" - and then you're dealing with new market segments that Apple created themselves, and which are showing every sign of opening up as the competition gets its act together.
Plus, I haven't noticed Google introducing lots of features in its search and maps services that only work on Chrome - or trying to restrict Android to Google services/software only (there are a ton of alternatives for everything in the Play store).
Finally, if the original case were re-considered today, it might not fly - it is now expected that an OS will come with web browsers/HTML components and a shedload of other stuff as standard. Back then, web browsers were a new-ish application with companies like Opera and Netscape seeking to make money from them (ISTR Opera cost money, whereas Netscape was a loss-leader to sell other services),
I'm looking around and I can't see Win8 having a significant percent of the market (maybe I can't see because it's night time, but anyway...) what monopoly are you talking about?
The one that will exist once it becomes difficult to buy a PC with Windows 7, more and more new software/upgraded requires Windows 8 and the legions of Windows 7 and XP users sigh, give up and upgrade to Windows 8.
The one that means that so many people are putting up with the horrible ribbon interface in Office because they need to be able to exchange files reliably with other Office users.
Brand new $329 product sells faster than $499 product with minor spec bump! Film at 11! (Comparison with iPad 2 is silly - it is an old product which, has lower specs than the Mini, has the same number of pixels as the Mini, still costs $70 more and will probably be discontinued soon).
Meanwhile, the first generation of 7", 16:9 tablets of which his Steveness was speaking didn't exactly sell like hotcakes. The format has since been popularised by Amazon and Google offering extra cheap 7" tablets firmly aimed at media consumption (which they may be treating as loss-leaders).
Its also worth bearing in mind that the Mini isn't a 7" 16:9 tablet, its a 7.9" 4:3 tablet with the same number of pixels as the original iPad. That's a non-trivial difference especially when (e.g.) you want to type in landscape format.
*not that I use ipmi, but its presence marks a serious machine room server
I think the moral of the story is that there are lots of individuals and small businesses that don't need a "serious machine room server" .
Consumer-grade hardware, these days, has a pretty good MTBF. If your business depends on many inter-related servers being up 24/7, and downtime costs $100,000 an hour then those MTBFs will stack up to an unacceptable degree so ECC, redundant power, hot-swappable raid drives are essential.
If your business depends on hosting lots of co-located or rented machines, and your only obligation is to keep the network up and, on request, to power-cycle a machine or swap out a faulty machine with a good one (making.restoring backup can be the customer's responsibility), then the calculation changes somewhat.
If a Mac Mini blows, one customer has downtime. If a "serious" server hosting 20 VPSs fails (ECC and redundancy won't catch everything) then 20 customers have downtime.
Put simply, if you don't put as many eggs in the basket, you can risk using a cheaper basket.
Not to mention that multitasking is mostly about RAM, since on Android processes in the background don't usually do all that much work.
This is changing - the Note II has a split-screen mode that lets you have two applications running side-by-side and can also play video in a small window overlaid on another app.
The first one you link to comes with Android 2.2 FFS.
Sorry - I meant to link to the Galaxy SIII Mini, not that one. (While choice is good, the 10 zillion similarly-named models that Samsung produce show that you can have too much of a good thing).
However, smaller phones have less space for batteries, less pixels to wrangle and will typically be used for less demanding apps, and are less suitable for multitasking - so less powerful processors make sense.
Just got my a GalaXy Note ll two days ago. writing this with the stylist.
Yes... we can tell :-)
(Hint - try enabling 'complete recognition' - this is squirrelled away under Settings > Personal > Language and Input > Samsung keyboard > Handwriting - I find it more reliable and makes catching mistakes easier).
What if phones came in a range of shapes and sizes so you could choose the size that suited you.
If only we lived in such a world...
NB: Samsung links for illustrative purposes only - different sized phones are available from other manufacturers - I believe Apple will sell you a rather fine phone if you believe that there is Only One True Phone Size. Odd, because Apple offer every other product line they do in a range of form factors...
Seriously folks - the right size of phone depends on your personal priorities. If you're a heavy voice/txt user then maybe a smaller, thumb-friendly phone is for you. If you only send the occasional voice call or txt, but want web, email, navigation, games in your pocket then phablets are more attractive. The Galaxy Note II is about the minimum size to be useful with a stylus and/or split screen multitasking - but maybe you don't want to use those (Samsung's split-screen multitasking is impressive, but I admit that the only reason I ever use it is to show people how impressive it is...)
No, it is not misspelled: initially they put the iPad on the hood
Hood? That's the leaky fabric bit you get on top of convertibles. Perhaps you mean "bonnet"?
Silly Americans naming the metal flap that covers a car engine after a type of headwear... oh, wait... :-)
Meanwhile, if they're going to test these things in Oxford I hope that they're fitting the car with an industrial strength bike-catcher and an AI that can cope with one-way systems designed by M.C. Escher.
1. I'm confident that if we have not already, we will soon reach a point where entire discussions can be composed of no text other than xkcd links.
Indeed.