Sure Android will switch to a wifi hotspot, but that paywall/clickwall the provider put up will cause all apps/browsers to download the clickwall instead of their intended destination, and break. I frequently find myself having to disable wifi because I'm in a coffee shop that I frequent, and don't want to deal with your clickwall just so I can pull up google maps to get directions. Happens in airports especially. I'd just rather use the 3G than deal with your clickwall, for some trivial info lookup. Android needs to figure out whether it has a real connection or a clickwall, before routing all your traffic through the new connection.

Switching between wifi and cellular is far from perfect. I don't believe e.g. Skype can really handle switching upstream providers at all...

But the money is already removed from your account. Reporting it does not cause the money to reappear in your account. (Some banks will do that, depending on the nature of the fraud, but it's up to the bank) The dispute process takes 6 months to a year, and in the meantime, you're out the money. And in the event of disagreement, you're screwed by default.

And worse, with PIN transactions, the account holder assumes the risk of fraud, which is large, and the fault of banks creating a ridiculous transaction system based on a set of "secret" numbers (printed on the card).

I hope this will lead to the rise of new, more secure transaction systems, and competition over fees, rather than the collusion that is occurring now. It was eye-opening to live in Europe, and see the SEPA system over there. You can send money securely to any person or business, instantaneously. Over in the US you generally cannot send money to other people (some banks allow ACH now, but that is often TWO way, and your money is in limbo for 3-5 days while the Clearing House makes interest on it). Frankly, I think the US constitution's requirement that the government issue currency means that the government needs to get involved and fix/regulate a secure transaction system, to lubricate the economy. Let's just join the SWIFT/BIC system. It works.

Maybe you would know... Why is research insisting on "broad spectrum" antibiotics: single compounds that kill many bugs, rather than making antibiotic cocktails? If there is a probability of developing a resistance P, then a cocktail containing two antibiotics should have a probability P^2. Is it something sickening to do with patents? Or is there a good scientific reason?

Ipads are great, especially the latest one, except that the screen is slightly small, and writing with a capacitive stylus is worse than crayons. I need a resistive digitizer to write equations.

Multiple tablets. 11x17 has a 1.55 aspect ratio, which is closer to 16:8=1.78 than 8.5x11. The zoom factor is horrible though, nearly 1/4 the area of a full-width page on 8.5x11 vs 11.6 diagonal. Seriously, we need to lobby for tablets matching common paper sizes, at 200-300dpi, not movie and game devices awkwardly adapted to non-frivolous uses.

Well, technically, we were there, and the industry decided to start moving backwards.

I still use a Thinkpad X61 tablet which has a 1400x1050 screen (150 ppi) and a wacom digitizer. I've been using it to annotate PDF's for years. However, it's on it's last legs but there is still nothing to replace it with.

I made a paper cutout of the size of the screen for 10.1" and 11.6" and 13.3" Windows 8 devices at 1080p, which have respectively 218, 190, and 166 ppi. (In my opinion, 150 ppi is the absolute minimum to be able to read subscripts in a full-page maximized document). You'll notice that all these 16:9 screens are substantially narrower and taller than a sheet of paper. (16:9 is an aspect ratio of 1.78, while 8.5"x11" paper is 1.29) So maximizing the width of a full page on a portrait TV-screen gives you closer to 1.5 pages at a time. The old 4:3 monitors were perfect for documents in portrait mode (aspect ratio 1.33 -- so enough room for a toolbar). Why in the bloody dripping hell everyone decided to use TV screens for computer displays boggles my mind. On the most common Windows 8 screen size, 11.6" at 1080p, an 8.5"x11" document is compressed into a 5.69"x7.36" space. How good are your eyes? For those of you with your calculators out, that's less than half the area of the original 8.5"x11" paper. Sure you could zoom it, welcome to an unending hell of fiddling with scrollbars on a tablet device. Oh and don't forget those 1" document margins wasting screen space. Do you know a good PDF reader that can reliably zoom away margins for screen reading? Neither do I.

The only reasonable upcoming windows 8 device, in my opinion, is the Asus Taichi, the 13.3" version of which has been indefinitely delayed. :-(

Everything else on the market either has: too small of a screen or no digitizer. So, in case anyone from the industry is reading this, bring back 4:3 screens, make them around 14" diagonal with very small bezels and while you're at it, give us > 200 PPI or higher and resistive digitizers!!!. An 8.5"x11" sheet of paper has a diagonal size of 13.9". There's a huge market out there that is unsatisfied. Everyone on the damn planet uses paper, and we need devices that emulate paper use-cases. The OP and myself would definitely buy such devices. Screw Apple and their narrow-minded "no stylus" initiative. Paper has been in use for thousands of years. It's not going to stop tomorrow.

So payment security comes down to insurance and legal liability? Fuck that. Truly secure transactions are well within or means, and have been for decades. I want neither to lose my money, nor to funnel billions to criminals through insurance premiums.

Try again, you jokers.

hint: chip and pin, two factor authentication, and private keys for cardholders are good starting points.

I disagree on the music. I too wanted to upload my music collection to my phone, but thought I'd try to live without it with a Galaxy Nexus phone. Since I bought it I've discovered:

• All the music/streaming/radio apps are ad-laden broken crapware. Half the time they stop after 2 songs, and the other half of the time they're shoveling unwanted ads at me. (Pandora: ads, Spotify: facebook credentials?!?!, WinAMP: ads, only works half the time, the list goes on...) In practice I never use any of these, and I hate every one I've tried.
• You might consider paying for one of the above music services to avoid the ads, but since their free adware versions don't work correctly (broken connections and stopping after a couple songs), I'm loathe to fork over cash.
• When I really want my music is when I'm not connected to the internet: on a plane, camping, etc.

So, yes, I really really do want more storage space on these things, and/or a SD card. Of course FAT formatting is downright retarded (interesting point though). I'm happy if it's EXT formatted...

I've always wanted to create a corporate structure that took into account the needs of customers and society as well, along the lines of co-ops.

Wouldn't it be interesting if you, as a consumer, had voting rights in that company proportional to how much money you spent with them, or how much money they made off you?

Then once you have a workable structure, enforce that all legally incorporated entities use that structure...

I made some cutouts of a 11.6" screen and 13.3" screen, and 11.6 is just too narrow. 13.3" buys you nearly an inch in portrait page width (5.69" vs. 6.52"). What I wouldn't give for 8.5".

P.S. Original source of that tablet+stylus table.

One more try to get this link right.

I'm holding out for the Asus Taichi 31, because I like the 13.3" screen. Second choice would have to be the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro.

I really would like some data on the styli though. My Thinkpad tablet (Wacom) has degraded resolution near the edges, and with such narrow TV-screens, that leaves about 4" in the middle (portrait mode) that is writable. Do the new ones have this problem? What about the S-Pen and N-Trig styli?

Well that didn't work...try this link (these tables are not mine).

The Surface Pro does. Here is a longer list of Windows 8 tablets with DPI > 150 and a stylus. I find 150 DPI to be the minimum if you want subscripts to be legible when placing a full page on screen (width maximized). Of course, the higher the better.

I've long been frustrate that Apple decided to forgo the stylus (and all others are playing copycat), and I'm really really frustrated that no one else sees the utility and use case in a computer that acts like paper (facepalm). I'll give Windows 8 a try for 5 or 10 minutes, but then Ubuntu and Xournal are going on mine. I'm also really frustrated that all these morons decided a 16:9 TV screen is the only way to make a computer screen: they're substantially narrower and taller than a Letter or A4 piece of paper. But at least they've finally returned to the desired DPI and stylus feature-point. The last time that happened was 2007 with the Thinkpad x61 tablet (with the SXGA+ screen upgrade).