It stripped me of the control I had over when and under what circumstances people could contact me, and placed that control in their hands.

There's a simple solution turn the damned thing off.

I'm just waiting for someone with money to bring the situation to its obvious parodic conclusion and be carried up to the top on a gilded litter dressed like Xerces.

Thanks to Google's project Calico, I would like to be the first to wish Dan a speedy recovery.

I'm guessing the next rev will have a 4k display. I believe the competition is also looking into that as well. Given the extra R&D on an entirely new concept with equally impressive tech; I give the launch date late 2016 or early 2017 for a consumer product.

And the question is - is it too late? I mean, we've been hearing about OR for years now, and all the wonderful things it can do. Consumers are ripe for *ANYTHING* to come onto the market.

An enterprising Chinese manufacturer can release POS versions of OR with crappy screens and laggy tech and make it for $150. If they release it by the holidays, that will be the big Christmas gift of the year.

And by CES 2016, everyone would wonder what the hype was about, and damage the concept so badly, even an Apple version wouldn't get the market going again.

The technology is being hyped up way beyond reasonable. The first out of the gate could really go and spoil it for everyone.

Yes, a high-res display is nice, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if it wasn't there. You want the low latency and fast response and that is already there. Someone releasing a crappy version would bring about the same thing that happened every time it's tried - it flops, and the technology gets shelved for another decade.

Same here. I had no end of problems with my old Buffalo running Tomato, needing a wifi base station reset once every few weeks. In the end I switched to an Airport Extreme base station. It hasn't failed once in over a year. I'm so happy with it that I bought one for my parents too.

I know that he means the on-board electronics in the battery, including the temp sensors and such. I'm of the opinion that all software is exploitable, even int main(){ printf("Hello, world") } has a clever exploit when compiled on a common consumer non-posix platform. If someone wants to hack that battery, there is a way that just needs to be found.

Would make sense to have pv panels charge them up during the day and release energy at night.

No that doesn't make any sense. The power companies are subsidizing this because it helps even out the day/night usage curve. Right now they have to build enough generating capacity for the daytime peak, then shut down a good chunk of it during the night. If they can keep it running during the night, store the power in people's home batteries, which then make it available during the day, it flattens that curve. They can satisfy more demand without having to build more plants.

That's why prices are higher during the day - there's more demand at that time. Time-shfting solar from day to night is pointless (unless you're off the grid). Just send the power from the PV panels straight onto the grid during the day when demand and prices are highest.

Also note that Scenario B may be automatic grounds for invalidating the patent, since for it to have happened the patented idea in many cases must have been "obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art."

"GTAI and Deutsche Bank’s conclusion - based on the price trends of solar, batteries, electricity in Germany, and German feed-in-tariffs - is that ‘battery parity’, the moment when home solar + a lithium-ion battery makes economic sense, will arrive in Germany by next summer, 2016."

http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/1...

Irrelevant. This is an idea already proven viable.

Has not been proven to be economically viable.

Irrelevant. Not the only technology.

It is the technology the solution in the ARTICLE uses. The rest is pink unicorns.

It's the Indian-Asian boundary. India is a subcontinent on its own tectonic plate which has been crushing into Asia for a long time. The place where the plates collide is in the Himalayas. Those mountains are still increasing in altitude because of that.

e.g. flow batteries:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news...

They do that already with pumped-storage. Reversible hydroelectric. There are also some liquid batteries. Li-ion is just too expensive and maintenance-intensive to use grid scale.

What are the actual MS patents for which these Android companies are paying royalties? TFS and every one of TFAs don't say, don't even hint.

I see that you don't work in software.