People can hate Windows 8 all they want, but the signs are clear: Microsoft wants a unified platform for mobile and desktop apps, because at some point Google will get Android apps to run on Chrome OS and Apple will get iOS apps running on OS X machines
A mainstream machine that merges the tablet with the laptop market will make it clear to those who have been distracted that tablets are the main PC for millions of people. I think that Surface Pro is more of a proof of concept while the the MacBook Air or the supposed 12" iPad can be that machine.

The touchscreen will be secondary, what will define the PC market will be app stores. One fine morning we'll look at the PC market and realise that 30% of machines are running Google Play apps, 30% are running Windows Stores and 30% are running iTunes apps.

Well... Bolt has done his 100m in 9.58s but only needs 19.19s to do twice the distance. I say if he does the marathon in more than 1 hour he's not that great as people say.

Seems to work for a variety of small time programming jobs.

Indie to the rescue! It's now on its last legs as development stopped a while back, but Altitude (altitudegame.com) is great multiplayer game that I read about on Slashdot and have been playing since 2009. The micro-transactions part of the game didn't work well, so the authors dropped it. If you just want to shoot at other players and not read about it, the in-game chat can be switched off, players can be muted and you can just avoid going to the forum pages on their website (which is separate from the game).

With the new billion of people going online on their tablets and phones, there is a lot of noise and annoying sales tactics that didn't work when all computer users were nerds. We just have to choose our battles and our games.

then stop assuming and just read the article. it's a really good one.

True, U2 have more money in their pockets than most. However, if you do get around to read the Salon.com article I recommended (and I really think it's a great +5 insightful read), you'll be able to learn about what happens BEFORE someone has the chance to become big as U2. You'll see that the revenue share that privileged U2 and Radiohead opted out from was NEVER good for a starting band in any case.

I thought this album release was quite significant actually. Many years ago Courtney Love wrote on Salon.com ("Courtney Love does the math") that she was not bothered with P2P distribution of her music, as in fact CD sales were not a source of income for artists. Every now and again the publishers associations whine about how artists will perish due to P2P, and on /. there is disagreement with no proper evidence to support it. Now we see a well established band and Apple showing that revenue sharing with a publisher for printing CDs that may or may not be bought is not the best deal they could have.

Opt-in and UI preferences aside, this album was a major release.

I have two objections on the "big pharma fighting the truth about cancer" point of view... maybe you can give this some thought and comment on them:

1) how can the pharma have a PERFECT bureaucracy that wins EVERY time a new alternative cure comes along? A lot of people say that big pharma has a big cover up operation in place and no cure will ever be publicised or made viable unless it suits big pharma. However, when articles about alternative cures come along, they are always revolutionary and obviously simple. If that's the case, why don't we see something as simple as gathering 100 or 1000 cancer patients, treat them, document the success and only then release the findings on Youtube/P2P/whatever?

2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?

I thought the reason for punishment was that the cold war balance of power was disrupted by Cuba in a way that many millions of people USA could have lost a nuclear war before the USA could fire their own missiles at the USSR. Did I get that totally wrong from this side of the Atlantic?

I don't know about that... I wrote mud before because a swatch and a "traditional" watch for sports use can just be put under the tap for a good wash. That's "water-proof" in my book, not "water-resistance".

The sauna case is not just because Suunto and Polar are originally from Finland, but because I've had Swatches die (nearly) after I used them in the swimming pool, then sauna, then back to day to day life. I believe it was the battery that could not cope with the change in temperature. A few years of resting in the drawer and that Swatch came back to life with a new battery. I look forward to seeing the tech specs on smartwatches to understand what are their operating parameters. Until then, I assume they are closer to electronics than to the jewellery world.

One thing I haven't read thus far about the smartwatch situation is that Motorola, Apple, Samsung, etc. are new entrants to an area where Polar, Suunto, Garmin and a few others have already been building this sort of equipment for a long time. These guys have build watches with heart rate and other sensors with varying degrees of ruggedness, specifically for the purpose of surviving sports use. Spending ã100-ã300 for a device that needs daily charging, in a shell that can't go into the sauna, sea and mud just for the sake of having 1000 apps (at ã0.99 each) instead of 10 functions built-in is not that compelling until SPECTACULAR apps turn up.

This article comes at a great time, because heart rate and GPS as apps aren't that convincing IMHO. Maybe a fart-rate app is what the world needs.

If I read TFS correctly, your customer can access the required resources as long as they have a valid support agreement in place with HP.

It looks to me that HP is saying that hardware buyers are only entitled to a license for software patches if they pay some sort of annual rent. Some will pay, some will shop elsewhere.

If we consider that the questions on the survey were:
"do you feel that corruption is widespread in your country?"
and
"do you feel that corruption affects you personally?"

then it's an unsurprising result. If people are told their country is corrupt and bankrupt when it is obviously going through a serious crisis, it is easy to believe in that story and perpetuate that perception of a broken country.

Well, I did not get that from the original submission. I hope you don't end up wasting public funds to re-invent Facebook and then realise that people are not aware or not willing to sign up for yet another region-specific social network.

There's quite a lot you can do with Facebook pages, and a lot of people will already have username/pwd there.