Not to bash the iPhone, but how is it that Apple seems to be so much ahead of the pack when it comes to the iPad but the iPhone seems to be just another high-end smartphone? I mean the new full-size iPad seems so much better especially in size and weight than anything else out there, while the 5s is just a nice spec bump.

Totally agree with you except for Gitmo. His opponents tried to make it sound like by giving those bastards a trial and bringing them to NYC that somehow everybody was in danger, and they were gonna get off easy (in NYC yeah right). If I recall for whatever reason he doesn't have the authority to force the issue because he can't bring them to the states without congress.

That said he is a coward who did the base minimum to say he tried when people called him on it. If he had pushed back against the fear mongering and reminded people that only that the justice is a conviction not indefinite detention he might have been able to do it. Hell if anything I would have pushed the point and reminded people that if we ever plan on charging them it would be better to do it soon instead of letting them sit in limbo until some future date while the evidence gets lost and witnesses disappear and then we really are stuck with having to hold them forever. Plus how do you defend that one to our allies. Um yeh we don't really have enough to convict these guys every since Mohammed Kablewie died in that hunger strike last year. And nobody can find the taped confession. But we can't let them go.

Hmm interesting. I surprised rent doesn't rank higher. Thanks for the info.

I think it really depends on the business as well. If you are running a corner mart then I imagine you get a lot of chargebacks and bad cards which wouldn't help and lots of small transactions must be a pain. On the other hand while the guy who fixes PCs might think it's silly they don't just give him cash, and thats fair, but other than the fee he pays what would be the reason to "hate" them as you say? And before anybody comes yelling that credit cards are satan and real men use paper money let me agree with the first part of that statement and then remind people that debit cards for many people are actually a better way to handle their money than cash At least for me it is. But maybe I've just been lucky dealing with a surprisingly honest credit union instead of my old bank.

Just because the mods weren't any good doesn't change what I thought was a pretty obvious joke post. I meant no offense... but when you saw the Japan stuff and then the random jump to Ubuntu being racist you didn't suspect maybe he wasn't serious?

Thank you! This is such a common misunderstanding people have and it can really lead you to confusion when actually dealing with a person who has the condition. In fact it was that exact problem that led to my parents being reluctant to put up the money to have me tested as an adolescent. They were caring people, but money was tight, and the few times I remember it being mentioned by friends or family as something to look into they would reply non-defensively that they had considered it and then provide examples of how I would read my software and computer manuals cover to cover (back when they were 200 pages) or had no problem focusing on cartoons, or how I had never been trouble in school. I remember them telling a teacher my at conferences in 5th grade after he suggested testing, and upon hearing it the teacher himself remarked that my issues must be something else then.

This was compounded further by the fact that I am much more closely aligned with what used to be called ADD back before they bizarrely decided to reintegrate ADD and ADHD back into just ADHD. I'm not hyperactive at all, and despite ADD and ADHD's many shared symptoms I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have to explain to people who are confused about how I could be such a slow paced laid back person(to a fault) and have a disorder that people associate with kids jumping off the walls. This disorder is already so surprisingly misunderstood by the public that lumping slow pokes like myself with individuals who at first glance seem to be my polar opposite only further confuses those trying to understand my situation, and gives ammo to people who think the whole thing is made up or just a willpower issue.

As somebody with mild ADHD and who just happens to be a gamer I was exited by the headline. That is until I saw that these games aren't really games, at least not the kind any self-respecting gamer would choose. Bummer dude.

As a non-coffee drinker I've been told by multiple people that Starbucks of all places is very proactive about this stuff. I think they had an app for the original iPhone almost right when the Appstore opened that laid some of the framework like being able to save billing info in the app along with giftcards. Clearly certain companies payed enough attention early on to realize that NFC or something like it was coming soon and it was a good idea to get people used to the concept of using their phone in the transaction process. Chipotle also did something similar early on, but for whatever reason they scaled it back a bit and seemed to shift more to scannable coupons which still accomplishes the goal of getting people thinking of their phone as a means of improving the ordering process. The main cost for these retailers isn't the food/coffee they serve it's the time and space you take up as you order it and then have to wait for all the inefficiencies with cash, cards, or checks. Getting you in and out as quickly as possible is their goal. The side benefit for them is that for once their methods for saving them money also have the effect of making the experience quicker and more pleasant for you. An uncommon win-win in the world of low margin penny pinching retailers.

I can vouch for that. I work with lots of old scientific instruments and was just working on a 3.1 machine a mere 3 hours ago messing with a printing issue on the equally dated dot-matrix printer it has connected. Since I work at a university and still remember these old systems I'm always tasked with fixing anything NT4 and before. Thankfully thats only 4 machines and they hardly ever break. But when they do it's always a adventure. Luckily I think the bright yellow plastic, funky looking mice, and cloudy old CRT displays keeps people from messing with them mostly. It's sort of strange to think that almost all of the student workers and a ton of the research staff weren't born or were infants when those suckers came out. Man are computers easier to use these days, but god damn are those things built to last.

Personally at Nexus 7 size I think the phone layout is a good choice. My guess is anything actually useful like when you need to pull up the keyboard would just be too cramped to be more than a fun little gimmick that you use to show off to phone users and then never look at again. But I do know what you mean. For instance a 9-10 inch tablet seems like a totally different ballpark. To this day the full size iPad and similar Androids still give me that oversized iPod Touch feeling that caused lots of mocking back when the original iPad came out. While the consensus here was wrong about if this format would be useful to anybody (it clearly is) I do think you are right that OS's need to be more flexible about offering more than just full screen as a way to interact with our expanding expectations for tablets. Anybody who has ever played with one of the Android powered large style PC's or Windows 8 knows that certain things about a huge screen only running one app in the foreground at the time feels odd, and uncomfortable from both an interaction as well as a information display perspective.

We've been hearing this argument since 2007 and it is still hasn't happened. Frankly X and iOS will not merge because Apple seems to have simply no interest in it. They've had years to start warming up developers and start the shift but it just hasn't happened. In fact looking at OS X from a user standpoint it really hasn't changed at ton since the first beta in 1999. The colors have changed, and a few visual things, but for users it pretty much the same thing just with lots more features you can use if you want. The only thing we've seen lately is a couple of debatably good ideas cross over from iOS but only when they can mesh with the desktop paradigm. Stuff like Launchpad isn't even noticed unless you know where to look. Looking at the next version which will be around for at least a few years I still see nothing that suggest you are right. And after seeing Windows 8's public response I highly doubt Apple wasn't to be seen as not just a follower of MS, but one that cribs it's worst ideas. iOS apps on X might happen, but I would be shocked if it wasn't offered as more of a cool extra perk to as opposed to a migration strategy. If Apple were planning that they've had ample time to have gotten things moving.

I like your idea, but it would never fly as more than a very niche product for people like us. Nobody will ship a mainstream successful phone that doesn't have a unified interface. It's suicide to expect the average smartphone user to understand, much less make use of 2 different totally different ways of operating their "phone". And that is assuming it is seamless and doesn't need to be messed with when one wants to transition. I trust Google and Apple to perhaps be able to nail that part, but even if it really is automagical it will still confused the shit out of most users. Sure the pitch might sell a few of them for the cool factor and geeks will love it, but most people are barely able to use their smartphones as it is beyond installing apps and opening emails. Look at desktop PC users and you will know what I mean. Windows is old as sin by now but it still is mostly a mystery to the average user who uses it almost every day. I think the Moto Atrix was an attempt at what you are talking about, but I never really followed it after hearing about all the drama the software/ROM had. I'd be curious is others have tried this and what the resulting products were like.

Dude, whoooshh! I'm pretty sure he was talking in jest.

and written up by the dedicated hacks over at NetworkWorld. Too bad for them they could only span it over to measly pages. Think of all the advertising dollars wasted.