As yet, it has still not happened for tablets of the same spec as the iPad - the Xoom is as close as anyone has come and it is still more/about the same give or take.

The same-spec'ked iPad clone is probably a tough act to clone. But does a tablet have to be as feature-"full" as the iPad? Is this the vaunted Steve Jobs distortion field?

Outside the US, there are already sub-$100 tablets with resistive touch screens. Some even come with unofficial "Android" operating systems (i.e. not blest by Google).

I see no reason why a company can't undercut the iPad by half and still make a slim profit. For a long time, a certain software company managed to earn billions by making crappy knock-offs of Apple's then flagship Macintosh systems. When can another company or companies do the same for a generic tablet XPerience?

True, their "resource usage" isn't high for a project of this sort. However, just think of all the other cool stuff they can make, at even lower cost, that can inspire young people. I mean, think of robots and self-replicating 3-D printers, stuff that the young people themselves could clone, even at a cruder and smaller scale.

Here, it's mostly watch and learn, as you yourself have pointed out:

they're touring schools and colleges doing presentations, along with a full size replica of the car

And they're likely to be more inspired by the video of a space plane soaring up to the heavens or a space probe touching down on the Moon. If I were a child, I'd definitely be more inspired at the site of a walking and dancing 2-foot high "toy" robot than the immobile mock-up of the world's supposedly fastest car.

This discovery simply extends the idea that restful activities like reading promote sleep better than do physically and mentally demanding activities like heavy exercise. Of course, working yourself to (physical and mental) exhaustion may have the same effect as lying in bed and reading a book.

The interesting thing about regular robots is that they're supposed to control themselves

I'm not sure what you mean by regular robot. But there are precedents for remotely controlled robots, both in science fiction and real life. E.g. the battle droids of the Trade Federation in the Star Wars prequels appear to be remote controlled:

"These droids would blindly obey orders spoken to them by their commanders or transmitted to them from an orbital Droid Control ship. The efforts of Bravo Squadron, and Anakin Skywalker in particular, destroyed the Droid Control Ship, thereby rendering the army useless."

The droids may have had some sensory autonomy but were largely "mindless", pretty much like a phone "app" whose data processing back end is in the cloud.

The robonaut that was sent up to the ISS is basically a telepresence device, a telerobot if you will. And of course there are the unglamorous industrial robots that are all tools and arms.

The Geminoid family, a series of ultra-realistic androids, each a copy of a real person, has a new member

A bit realistic perhaps, but definitely not ultra. I've bothered to actually watch the fine video, and the movements are still on the near side of the creepy valley. As for its classification as an android, really, it's not even a talking head, just little more than an animated wax dummy, able to blink and sigh but incapable of a decent conversation. The main use I see for this is in big budget Hollywood movies where you have to blow up your star actor. But CG can service that department fairly well already.

The Apple logo is just the invitation to this sort of techno-moralism. For natural born atheists and non-Christians, the half-eaten apple is a representation of the Forbidden Fruit. So, yes, Apple is "evil" in that "iconic" sense. You just have to have an iPhone but all you can afford is an Android? Confess your sin and say your prayers, son.

Then there's fusion reactors, a proven clean energy source that seems to always be left out of the discussion.

You probably mean fission, unless you know something we don't. Or are you talking about the biggest power source within eight light minutes of us?

The best the First World can do militarily[*] is a no-fly zone, that is, grounding the dictator's main military advantage. Shipping lots of arms can only serve to escalate the war. And who knows, in whose hands those weapons would fall? Remember what happened in Afghanistan when the US was trying to root out the Soviet-sponsored regime? That succeeded marvelously and also gave birth to the Taliban.

I suspect your suggestion comes the the so-called "right to bear arms" that many in the US hold so dear. This doesn't work in all situations, but probably only in those countries or locales where you have a strong middle class. If you're poor and hungry, you tend to think of a gun not just as an instrument for self-defense and national liberation but as a tool to get the necessities you want (food, sex, etc.).

[*]Food and medical aid is probably still the best option.

I agree this is irrelevant, as far as nerds are concerned (so where's the !nerd tag?). Yes, it's probably monstrously important for Slashdot users as human beings that some order is being established in that country. After all, who needs another Somalia? But it should be in a news for nerds context like how to get news in/out of net-deprived $country, make a cheap sat-dish receiver, or send aid online (without getting scammed), etc. More of this and Slashdot becomes just another Digg or Reddit.

No, if you're earning $$, why bother? Like a dictator or mob boss, have somebody else do the dirty deed for you. That way you don't get sued for whatever happens to the child. Let the manufacturer think of the children.

Well then I nominate /book as the antisocial equivalent of Facebook. Wait, where are the photos and the casual games? Really, if something's going to be called the X version of Facebook, shouldn't it be a site that at least allows you to deal with real people (or at least people pretending to be real) rather aliases and cartoon avatars? According to tFA, the site

appeared as lines of computer code and broken English [where] hackers and fraudsters traded anonymously [...]

Seems more like the "criminal" equivalent of Twitter to me. Or Craiglist, which has already been accused of being one.

Yeah, there should be a big button, right on the release announcement page, labeled "Download" for the OS/Architecture of the browser you're currently running. But the download's not that far off. For those to tired or lazy to look, the link to the download page is right under the link for "Release Notes". (This might be a case of deliberate obfuscation, since this is a beta that you don't want to mistake for a supported official release.)

I kind of like BTW the sci-fi theme of the page background, where you got this team of people fixing or unloading things off their hovercars.

The headline is a bit deceptive. I think the good professor was arrested for showing the videos to other people. (Although it's still possible the people he showed it to were arrested, too.)

Yeah, I know this is an computer hardware question, so I checked hard disk. But in terms of being "active" and "available", my most significant bits of information is stored between the ears: wetware. Really, most of the information I have stored on hard/optical/flash disk is information that I could afford to lose since I can Google or download them again. I can ill afford a neural systems crash.

Being at home above the equator, I'm confused by the article's reference to "material relating to confidential commercial information". Supposedly, such information could and should be protected from disclosure.

But why does the government need to have trade secrets along with the usual military and diplomatic embargo on information? Dictators and their cronies might think it's okay to run a government for profit, but my understanding of democratic government is that, at best, it shouldn't lose money ("balanced budget"). Fees are charged for paperwork and the like so the government can pay its employees or buy the raw materials it needs to render its services.