I think this is one of those ideas that *sound* better than it actually is. In short, adding graphics and video to electronic book readers are the first couple of steps into losing what a 'book reader' should be.

Many argue that eReaders "just aren't the same" as a real, 3 dimensional book. I agree... both literally and figuratively, I suppose. However, educational text books are perfect for eReaders. They are often enormous, have to be frequently carried around in conjunction with others book and I'm pretty sure most people don't care about how a text book 'feels'. So moving eReaders to book = good idea.

However, with an LCD screen, this changes things a bit. First, I feel this is losing the focus of what an 'eReader' is. It hasn't lost it yet -- but it is getting there. It blurs the line between an eReader and a Tablet... which could be a little blurry with a laptop already.

Another drawback over eReaders as we know them is we're going to see a pretty intensive increase in power usage. This is now going to be a device that needs to be charged hourly, depending on the battery size and how much multimedia they plan on packing into this thing. Books don't have videos and while it is neat, again, it is losing focus of being an electronic book and falling into the realm of tablet.

Take it a couple of more steps with web browsing, a keyboard etc... It's not longer an eReader. Personally, I'd rather have a 'dual screen' laptop that I could types notes on and read at the same time, since I'm going to spend a lot of my time looking in the general direction of an LCD already.

Everyone knows firing short, repeated bursts of tachyons between a 3 dimensional grid made up of Federation star ships is the most effective way to detect invisible, cloaked objects.

There's still room for error there though, and that is simply unacceptable based upon how we use our computers today.

This means that quantum-based processor will either become useful for a certain niche (something that doesn't require precise results) or we'll find a way to make them useful for everyday stuff... like outfitting classical processor technology with quantum capabilities to solve specific types of problems more efficiently.

I know it is disastrous trying to extrapolate meaningful conclusions from the details of this Examiner article -- but the wording of the article leads me to believe he's being arrested for selling the software.

Since .NET was installed in an 'official' way, I can only assume it is Firefox that provided Microsoft the ability to remove the "Disable" button from their first iteration of the Firefox WPF plugin. Is that behavior actually by design?

If it is, I certainly hope that gets changed in 3.6 too. Every plugin and extension ought to have 'Disable' and 'Remove' buttons, no matter what.

Why are you so hard on W|A? Wolfram Alpha answers LOTS of extremely important questions!

Query: What is the speed of an unladen swallow?
Answer: "there is unfortunately insufficient data to estimate the velocity of an African swallow (even if you specified which of the 47 species of swallow found in Africa you meant)"

Query: What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
Answer: 42

Query: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Answer: Not sure, but wherever she is, it isn't here.

Query: When is judgement day?
Answer: "2:14 am EDT | Friday, August 29, 1997"

Query: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound??
Answer: "No. Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound."

Query: Can entropy be reversed?
Answer: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Query: who would win in a fight: pirates or ninjas?
Answer: "The answer remains an ongoing debate which Wolfram|Alpha is not in a position to arbitrate."

Certainly, but it isn't as straight forward as you're implying. You're living in the 90s if you think a virus can't be hidden from a virus scanner.

Yes, but can that loader or the mechanism for installing that loader not change its own instructions by randomly transposing code? Can it not insert NOOPs here and there? Can it not reassign registers and so on? Is it always going to have the same hash/checksum/bytes?

No, no *good* virus will.

Heuristics are the secret sauce of good AV scanners, but that is certainly far from perfect. Otherwise, virus scanners rely on some form of 'virus signature', which is often based on a database of known viruses and checksums. Nearly any changes at all means you're AV is left guessing... And no algorithm is going to be right all of the time, even *if* the changes to the loader or virus are minimal.

The offline approach worked fantastically in the year 2000, but now... the playing field has changed.

We have root kits that embed themselves into alternate data streams, utilize virtualization, employ self-encryption and password protection and randomize what would otherwise be easy-to-detect signatures etc.. Some root kits can *only* be reliably detected if they are actually *running* because they conceal themselves using these techniques. *Even then*, it requires a competent utility with things like stealth detection which look specifically for that behavior of concealing/unconcealing itself. As a result, some of these viruses don't show up in Safe Mode either...

Scanning offline is a good first step if the system is hosed. From my experiences though -- if the system can boot and mostly works -- do whatever scanning you can first while it is online. Use your best judgment as to whether you have mitigated the threat and THEN take it offline for the final clean up.

It might be a good idea to take the pancreas too...

Now, if only it could warm your fingers which would be frozen so stiff they'd be useless for typing. :-)

This is all obviously for attention and is merely a token to the public of Toyota's commitment for being 'green'. The actual 'good' done by planting even an infinite number of flowers around their manufacturer facility is infinitely negligible even on a regional scale.

How *ever* do we intend to qualify everyone in the U.S. populace as a terrorist if we can't even keep up with the rate of population growth?

Slackers!

At this rate, I'll take nearly 5 centuries to burn our current citizenry at the stake. I'm sure we'll have many more people by then...

Keep doing that and you'll have some problems soon enough... I've seen a tremendous amount of harm done by these things and I don't care how 'good' it is, it is going to mess up eventually. When it does, you're going to be wondering where your start bar went or why you're getting some nagging error after opening Windows Explorer.

The worst part is reg scanners don't make your system unbootable where you can just system restore your old registry; rather, it just gradually creeps problems into your install that you never notice until you can't go back far enough to fix them. ;)

Navigon. 1.2GB

Yeah, naturally, companies don't want competition. If they *do* have competition, they'll do what they can to 'beat' it. That behavior brings out the best and worst in everything and everyone (the latter is unfortunate, but the prior hopefully makes it worth it).

You see things in a different way no doubt, but I don't have much trouble envisioning a successful MegaCompany in a fresh new market with such an iron hold on goods/services that they simply can't be competed against.

As an example, if MegaCompany has been peddling their stuff for awhile, they already get lots of business, get the best deals, have the most experience, have the most credibility and trust etc... There's a point where that gap becomes so wide that no start up could ever compete with that.

So, if it costs me twice as much to operate, what can I do?

Well, I can try to offer a better product/service. But, it'll be more expensive for me to do that than MegaCompany. Even if I do take a huge risk and spend everything I have to get this off of the ground, MegaCompany will undercut me by offering their own premium service for less. They can do it for less, so why wouldn't they?

I can try to innovate and replace MegaCompany's service/product by offering something that is not only superior, but perhaps a novel alternative. This might work if MegaCompany is resting on their laurels (as many monopolies would do, I'm sure). But any decent, intentional monopoly would still be looking into better ways to do things. As long as the threat of competition exists, this advancement ensures their future. Needless to say, innovation usually costs money though and MegaCompany has plenty of money, so they could already hire the 'best and brightest' who will be R&Ding in cutting edge facilities with plenty of resources. I might have some exceptional ideas, but there is a far greater chance *their* exceptional ideas will come first... and they have the capital to make sure they become reality first too.

I can offer the same or better service or product they do in a different area. Unfortunately, if MegaCompany is already well established, they can just plop down a new store or facility to undercut me if they choose to. I'm at their mercy in this respect.

What's left? Well, I could get lucky and discover something that replaces MegaCompany's product/service that is superior. I don't have as much funding or the best people working on new ideas, but I *might* be able to discover something that MegaCompany has missed with all of their resources.. I really don't like the odds though.

And perhaps, without competition, MegaCompany may be screwing up with enormously high prices or really bad service.. That might give me an 'in' as a startup. However, when I do start competing against MegaCompany, they have the advantage on practically everything. If they want to compete with me based on service or compete me with based on price, then they aren't going to have a problem doing that. Everything in capitalism revolves around money and whoever has the most money CAN offer the best service, the best price and the best products. Not every company does, but they CAN and any MegaCompany with competent leadership will ensure that they do so that no one else is able to compete in that market.

The *threat* of competition may help keep MegaCompany in check. They'll offer reasonable prices and decent products... just enough to undercut competition. But it'll never be as good as if we had real, viable choices. I also suppose a benevolent monopoly probably wouldn't be all that bad. You'd get the best prices and the best service etc... and they would spend their excess on innovation and all that jazz, but we all know that won't happen and what you get is incredibly rich people on top, poor people on the bottom and just enough reasonableness on their pricing, products and service to keep the little guys from competing.

It seems pretty hopeless, IMO. I And sure, know plenty of scenarios aren't like this, but some are... And just one is bad enough. Just imagine if you only had one store (Wal-Mart) or one phone company (AT&T). I *really* don't like the sound of that.