Been a big migrant problem here - since 1776...

I'd be surprised if they weren't making UPS versions of products like this also. If anything that is more likely something you'd connect to your network without questioning, for monitoring. The chance people would connect the RJ45 ports (I'm guessing these are supposed to protect against power surges) is a lot less in a corporate environment.

The first thing I thought when I saw this was how annoyed I'd be if I spend over $1000 and no-one plugged anything into any of the data ports. I'm guessing it could try to hack in wirelessly, but then they could have a put this into any device that had a constant power connection - shredder, radio, coffee maker - anything that gets left plugged in.

It still represents a threat, if I can learn things freely online, when I go to formalise that education it takes less time and effort, so they can't charge me as much for it.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/07/06/180201/university-sues-student-for-graduating-early

It is also a threat where it represents an alternative to formal education, for any area of occupation where skills, knowledge and experience can win you a position over formal qualifications. Maybe for an IT role, someone with no formal piece of paper might be able to get past the HR screening far more easily. Once you're past that point, if you know what you're doing and have a good attitude, you'll interview well, and do the job well. And then the sky's the limit.

I hope no-one is suggesting that Khan or similar will replace formal education, it will just put a dent in it. I'd also be more concerned if I were a smaller institution or offered vocational education that is above high school level but not at the degree level - a certificate level qualification isn't that useful in that HR screening scenario, someone could get skills/knowledge for free via online courses, do some work experience and ramp up to a similar level. No-one's going to pass up going to MIT because they can get the same level of education from youtube, though they might decide not to do a 26 week certificate course at their local college - instead opting to gain some knowledge online and use that knowledge to do a 3 month internship.

Fix my phone or buy new shoes... hmm, decisions, decisions... (5 seconds later) - OK shoes it is.

(Sexism Disclaimer: I'd be "fix phone or buy new phone" which is probably similarly pathetic.)

I haven't RTFA of course but in my experience it's a little different for more complex tasks. I find I remember where to find things, and/or how to find things, instead of remembering things. Typing or toasting bread are lower level tasks than that.

It's like not memorising phone numbers, I store them in my phone instead of in my head. I used to know people's numbers off by heart, now I don't ever bother learning them except for one or two key people. I don't feel the loss of this, I still have the ability to memorise phone numbers, I'm just spending that time doing something more interesting these days (like working out how to back up my phone's contacts list...)

This is how:

Gillard FTW

Yo dawg, I heard you liked memes...vagina.

Sigh.

(I agree with you, especially about the sharks/lasers one, but this is the internet - you're looking for logic in the wrong place.)

The office suite contains more than MS Word, I can only imagine the screaming if I told users at my office that we were going to move away from Outlook, or if I wanted to take Excel away from the finance people.

I would have expected non-MS apps to deal with Word documents fairly well.

Plus, if it was more convenient and also faster than air travel, more people would use it. One hour from LA to NY would take about the same time as my regular commute into work from the suburbs into the city (a distance of roughly 25 kilometres, in traffic).

Build it in Afghanistan?

Don't most Android owners just call their phone a "phone", not an "android phone"? Where Apple owners who call their phone "my iPhone", so that we know they are cool?

I tend to agree that iPhone users are likely to be more prone to drop their phone into the toilet, but including "android" in the trend results might skew things.

I'd guess (feel free to prove me wrong) that only people who spent a lot on their phone try to find out more info if they break it, so they search for repair info if it was broken/wasn't working properly and wasn't under warranty. A lot of those missing "cracked android screen" searches probably ended up as landfill.

Aren't these results also biased based on market penetration (I mean the "high end" smartphone market)? You'd need to filter results for iPhones compared to only other phones of similar quality to get a result you could use to refute the GP's suggestion that an iDevices "is no more nor less likely to break than other good-quality stuff".

This is the best citation I can come up with to prove that market penetration impacts on the results:

Google Trends search for "blackberry cracked screen"

"Your terms - blackberry cracked screen - do not have enough search volume to show graphs."

No - he didn't mention yellow bicycles.

How about Rule 34a: If it exists, there is dodgy car analogy porn about it?

You're saying these submissions are limited to specific cultures too? It isn't summer here.

Don't underestimate, fine, but you probably should account for the time to transfer the data from disk to tape and load all of the tapes into the SUV

If he's talking about the modern day equivalent, then it's extremely unlikely that his system stores its data on the tapes. The data would need to be moved off the tape and onto disk to be useful so the time taken to do that should be added to the comparison.

A large SATA disk will store a similar(ish) amount of data to a tape. We're talking about data transfer not long term storage requirement so for the purposes of the thought exercise it would be easier to use large SATA disks, or maybe SD cards.

I am sure someone with no time on their hands has worked out the relative bandwidth of a station wagon full of SATA disks versus a guy with a suitcase full of miniSD cards catching a plane back/forward.