just because you can reduce it to "doing the same thing over and over" doesn't necessarily mean that it loses all appeal.

Tell that to my wife.

He could be talking about a low-end job, but to say "PHP/MySQL web programming is a low-end job" is uninformed. The Onion and their AV Club, for example, are both sites on a PHP/MySQL framework, and a guy with a month or two of PHP experience isn't going to get a whole lot accomplished in that environment.

The "N" position is also used to shift up a gear.

Not quite. "N" has its own position.

Although I admit I too was confused at first by the picture. It seems "N" and Tiptronic "+" should be on different planes.

OpenID is a festering turd of poorly executed nonsense. Federated identification is great in theory, but it never ends well. It just plain sucks.

Although don't get me wrong, I've seen Facebook Connect implementations that suck goats, too.

Part of the East Bay is a 4G testing area. I just picked up a Sprint Overdrive, and it connects at 4G. The speeds are okay (3-4mbps) but not out-of-this-world like I was expecting.

The reason it was worth it is the unlimited data @ $60/month on 4G as opposed to the same price for 5gigs on 3G.

You get the best service -- in MIDTOWN MANHATTAN -- from AT&T on an iPhone?

Someone up high is looking out for you.

I think that's the point though. In a world where complicated is the norm yet we (claim to) want to bring computing to the masses, releasing a new service with yet another complex api seems counter to our goals (I say "complicated" in terms of volume, not in time-to-learn for someone familiar with APIs).

This is the company that brought real, effective search to the masses and collaborative document authoring/editing to companies full of PHBs. Google knows how to make complex things simple for the user. So given all this, I think the argument is rather the old standby: Do we need another X? In this case, do we need another cloud storage solution with nothing but APIs? S3 was bad enough. I don't see anything differentiating this service.... yet.

iPhones can be tethered without Jail Breaking now. Have been able to for some time.

Please, please show me where. I've been banging my head against a wall trying to do it. The carrier update hasn't worked in months.

Dude, I was trying to eat! Neat concept but super gross :P

What about interviews? Being a geek, I give terrible interviews. I also seem to sit with bored interviewers, and trying to catch their interest is something that oft seems impossible.

Corrections in bold. Please don't take this wrong, but you really need to work on your spelling/syntax if you're looking for a serious job. Do you speak the way you write? Unless you're non-native (Indian? Eastern European?), in which case people will need to see that you're comfortable with the subject matter and your less-than-perfect English isn't going to be a hindrance to your doing a great job.

Just my $0.02.

I wouldn't even try to post this from an iPad with one finger. It would take too long. The iPad is inherently a consumption device, and almost exclusively a consumption device

Your points about a participatory internet are well taken; however, it's clear you haven't used an iPad for any reasonable length of time. I regularly compose and post multiple paragraphs of text from it, using the same typing techniques I use on my laptop. It is very much -not- a one-finger or even two-thumbs device.

Slashdot: words for nerds, adjectives that matter =D

I was happily following along, then I read this:

In a nutshell: the question is not geeks X grandmothers

Followed by this:

the question is the right of doing what I want, when I want and the way I want with something I've paid for X giving more and more money for someone that IS transforming the market indeed - in a place where you don't own anything, you pay for the (supreme) honor of using someone's elses device.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the vast majority of the market couldn't care less, and they've said so with their wallets. It's a perfectly legitimate point of view for you to take -- I don't take issue with the validity of it. But "ok, so don't buy it" is also a perfectly legitimate response. iPad doesn't fit your needs; that much is certain. That's ok.

As far as business is concerned however, you're in the minority. Aggregate iPod + iPhone + iPad sales prove that much.

The "average consumer" also wants to play flash based games. Especially their younger children which seem to be drawn to those sort of things. And they don't care if it's flash or not, just if it works or not.

I hear you, although I think your first statement contradicts your last statement a little bit. I'd rephrase it, "the average consumer wants to play simple games." The app store has boatloads of popcap-like games, many of them free.

True that they may not be able to play $THIS_SPECIFIC_GAME, no doubt. Although I've been thinking about how flash games would even translate to a touch-based interface. Would you have to just display a soft keyboard? It wouldn't be using the device's human interface well if it did. What about hover states? This is all very confusing.

won't ever get you the full web

The problem I have with all these technophiles decrying the iPad's lack of flash is this: are you not the same group that beats down any flash site? FFS, slashdot is the place that puts [PDF WARNING] next to links. If anyone was going to complain about the lack of flash, this is the absolute last group of people I would have expected.

I could get a $500 laptop with a dual-core x86 CPU, run just about every OS under the sun, full multitasking, cheap 'apps', full peripheral support, replaceable battery, etc.

As I said in reply to the OP, the problem is that full PCs are simply too much machine for what many people want to do (watch a show, check facebook, etc). A $99 iPad would be a true game-changer, and I think something along those lines is the next step. At this price point, people (like you) get confused because of the price and say (as you did), 'but... look at the sweet box I could buy for $500, I don't get it!' The point is that my mom and my wife and many like them don't care in the least if they have a sweet box. They care if they can "like" timmy's facebook status.

I use my netbook or laptop while sitting on the sofa all the time, if I want to really "consume media" I fire up my HTPC and put on a movie. If I want to play a game I fire up my 360 or modified Wii.

Your geek factor (Look at me! HTPC! Check me out! Modded Wii!) is what's keeping you from seeing this market. Not everyone uses computers the way you do, and not everyone derives the same satisfaction from setting up their own rad HTPC setup. My wife is perfectly content to watch DVDs, out of a box, on her laptop. I thought that was madness when I first saw it. Fact is, people compute in different ways.