Comment Re:Fuck it (Score 3, Funny) 507
At least you aren't shadowbanned.
Comment Re:The lock in is more important (Score 1) 255
There's something to that, but I'd say that the majority of books are read once or twice at most so in that sense they're disposable. Of course there are reference books too, but how much of a market will they be? When Amazon tried introducing the Kindle 2 to college students they found it unsatisfactory as a way to read and refer to text books so that's probably not going to be a huge market.
On the truly disposable side, newspapers and magazines are frothing at the bit to get digital subscriptions on the iPad, but e-ink needs colour to make it a compelling choice. My bet is that these readers will find their niche in recreational novels, where the content is effectively disposable leading to a revenue stream based on sales of content, not hardware.
Comment Re:The lock in is more important (Score 2, Interesting) 255
What Apple did was invert the normal rules by being first to market with a credible MP3 player and leveraging their extremely loyal base. It was a beautifully executed coup, but not one that Amazon or B&N are in a position to duplicate. They gave it a go, but now they're having to fall back on the tried and true Gillette model.
Comment Razors vs. razorblades (Score 1) 255
It doesn't matter to them if the profit on the reader is razor-thin (heh) or even negative, so long as people are buying overpriced e-books.
Comment Wikipedramatics (Score 1) 553
That talk page is full of them.
Comment Re:Down or DDoS? (Score 1) 634
Either way, they'll probably blame it on the evil hackers.
Comment Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score 1) 656
If it isn't legal, it should be. A possible precedent would be terminals - either hardware or emulators - pretending to be VT100s.
Comment Passing the torch (Score 0) 93
Now that the US appears to be giving up on manned space exploration it's good to see other nations step up to the plate.
Comment Re:Two processors (Score 2, Insightful) 218
Two processors are used regardless of the licence. It just makes things easier from a hardware perspective to have one processor dedicated to the phone network functions and another to the UI and assorted programs.
Comment Re:Hi (Score 1) 218
I remember the Qt fun and games, yes. The LGPL will always be the *Library* GPL to me.
Comment Re:Hi (Score 1) 218
Fair enough, that's the way I understand the trade-offs too. I was just a little surprised to see no mention of the LGPL in your article and wondered if it was part of a sinister plot to deprecate the licence.
Comment Re:Hi (Score 2, Interesting) 218
Any comments about the applicability of the LGPL? It used to be very popular in embedded systems.
Radio Controlled Cyborg Insects At MEMS 2009 46
Frankie Modellismo writes "During MEMS 2009, a Micro Electro Mechanical Systems conference taking place in Sorrento (near Naples in Italy), the University of California, Berkeley showed a wireless system to control a live rhinoceros beetle. The researchers controlled the movement of the beetle thanks to six electrodes installed in the insect's brain. The rhinoceros beetles can carry up to 3gr, and fly carrying the control module that weighs a little more than 1 gr." The page is in Italian, but the pictures speak for themselves.
Researchers Create Graphite Memory 10 Atoms Thick 135
CWmike writes "Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate. 'Though we grow it from the vapor phase, this material [graphene] is just like graphite in a pencil. You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper. If you were to place Scotch tape over it and pull up, you can sometimes pull up as small as one sheet of graphene. It is a little under 1 nanometer thick,' Professor James Tour said."
2009, Year of the Linux Delusion 696
gadgetopia writes "An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low-power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to 'web only' applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too." The article goes on to skewer the year of Linux thing that seems to show up on pretty much every tech news site throughout December and January as lazy editors round out their year with softball trolling stories and "Year End Lists." We should compile a year-end list about this :)
