"not a Midas touch of Gold, but a Midas touch of death"

Pray tell us, whom they where copying from? Microsoft perhaps?

In the best /. tradition, I won't even bother to RTFA.

Since the loss of Sun Microsystems, which in retrospect seems to have been one the most open companies ever and with open source contributions surpassing those of almost any other organization's in the world, I have grown extremely suspicious of people dictating to me that this or that is evil, all in the name of "freedom". All those guys that had been bashing Sun must be really happy now that Oracle has taken over.

I can think of several companies that by /. standards can easily rival the "evilness" of Apple, but almost magically they seldom get mentioned as threats to net freedom. Until I see everyone else get their fair share of bashing and flames, I'll assume articles (and comments) of this class as astroturfing.

get a big cigar and practice saying "I love it when a plan comes together" while smoking it

mod parent up! XMPP (which basically boils down to the exchange of xml messages over a tcp connection
) makes a lot of sense in many areas where specialized protocols are currently used.

appeal to authority

1 trillion bits /sec, 1Tbps? Not so fast. At this point, optic fibers can carry multiple wavelengths, each carrying up to 100Gbits/sec. Mind you, 100Gbits are pretty recent, with implementations coming up from the major companies, like alcatel-lucent (plz correct me if there's already a commercial product). A more sane number is 40Gbits, 10Gbits or even 2.5Gbits. To multiplex and demultiplex multiple lambdas in a fiber you need expensive optical de/multiplexers, an amount of pairs of transponders equal to the number of your lambdas and possibly amplifiers/regenerators. Although it should be easier if we are talking about fibers a few meters long, the electronics and the optical components to handle these rates are neither easy nor cheap.

It would sound more reasonable to expect to have a single connection maxing out at 10Gbps, preferably a 10Gbit ethernet connection.

What we all need is a mod point reform, so that millions of slashdoters will be able to afford moderation!!

Mod parent insightful. Where are my mod points when I *need* them?

The Joojoo is available only in the US.

Sorry, but I would tend to be more interested in a device that I would be able to actually buy in a couple of months when it hits the shelves in Europe.

It is very common on slashdot to keep hearing about awesome devices (Remember the Sharp Zaurus?) which are actually impossible to buy unless you are living in a specific part of the world. Almost as good as vaporware.

Even ordering is not the same, because sometimes people may want to go to the store and actually play with the thing before shelling out the money. If you want a kindle, you have to order it. I have no serious problems with that, but I suspect that for many people even this is a show stopper.

Wifi to location is not provided by Google. The iPhone/iPod Touch use Skyhook Wireless.

Even when GPS is available, this service is being used inside buildings etc.

You can buy and play FIFA10 or even Grand Theft Auto on the iPhone. The games are a pretty good indicator IMHO. When complex and expensive productions from big studios start coming out for a platform, you know that the platform is popular.

And if you think Java makes any kind of difference, think again. The guys that are developing these applications do not seem to care. It's not about happy programmers, it's about happy users. And right now the iPhone still has the edge.

This material reminds me of the lunar module's landing gear, made out of collapsible aluminum honeycomb. Look here for the word aluminum. Highly interesting.

Unbelievable, you're right! I counted 9 out of 11. Maybe that figures how they are able to advance in such huge steps.

OMFG I just realized I need one ASAP.