Now now Linux and OS X (at least anything above what it ships with) will let you do something. You just have to RTFM, follow instructions very carefully and not screw up otherwise you might end up breaking something. So MS lets you find and install things easily some of which might be malware which might do something to screw things up. Linux/OS X (again beyond the trivial webbrowser and such) require YOU to be very careful that YOU don't screw things up. The Windows problem can be largely mitigated by a strong AV and actually paying attention to UAC prompts, the linux one requires more skill (and interest) than the average user possesses. I'd rather give someone a PC and install a good AV application and let them go to town then have them either not be able to figure out how to get something to work and use a limited system (by their lack of skill) or hound me and any IT savvy people they can find to spend an hour or two of their time RTFM'ing for them to get it to work.

I say they both would be crap. The best of "damn it MS my desktop is not a tablet" combined with the best of "damn it Google my desktop is not a smartphone". Please everyone stop trying to turn my computer into a smartphone: I don't want one at least not one with dual 24" screens and a keyboard and mouse attached (I look too "fabulous" like Richard Simmons sweating to the oldies swinging my arms around over a ~40" range of motion). Yes I realize trackpads and to those who recommend such shitty workarounds I say: so your solution to a crappy resolution pointing device is to scale down the large real space into an even more tightly packed (and thus even more crappy precision) mockup? No thanks.

The only (albeit large) exception is text values I think. I think a lot of people don't write tests to see that FirstName can be 40 chars but not 41 if for no other reason then creating a 41 char test string is a pain. I think unit testing suites should provide easy ways to test bounds like this. Something like Assert.MustBe(Firstname = 40); no generating of random strings, or how is often done someone pounding on a keyboard and counting manually that the string matches the criteria they are trying to impose, just a expression of the actual constraint not an example of the constraint.

Exactly. What test your code with values on eitehr side of the branching points in the code. Wow never would have thought of that one.

Can't buy for two months probably means it will be an even heat for comparable quality hardware by the time you can actually buy one of these (and of course dropping the Xeon and associated mobo, and ecc ram will save shitloads) and by the time Apple gets around to offering an upgraded version you'll be getting ripped off so bad you'll think you are an 80's band at a rap concert.

They paint them black and call them Reapers for a reason.

Do you get upgradability while still fitting everything into the same size and shape a box? Saying you can upgrade a full tower case you pick up for ~$100 is obvious. Upgrading a 12 core, 64GB of RAM small wastebasket is another thing.

Good point. I never can use a laptop anyways in a plane. The second the guy in the front tilts his seat back I'm done. If I get lucky and the person in front doesn't then I'd be okay but rare. I stopped even trying to pull the thing out when flying as by the time I got it booted and ready to do something they'd come with a drink, I'd move it out of the way drink then wait 40min for someone to come take the cup. Then another setup and dude in front leans back. Etc. just not worth it.

Guns don't kill people children behind the gun kill people.

The AK matches the philosophy of it's designers country and the majority of those that adopted it: don't waste money on rifles when people themselves are cheap. Its crude but if you are training a bunch of troops for a warlord via a magazine of ammo and a few targets in a desert you don't exactly need the best tech because you aren't going to be getting the best troops either. Good enough that a idiot won't break it then lots of idiots that is the key to success.

The thing is each hospital likely only has one of these and they are "only" worth $20,000. It doesn't take long before any custom development effort becomes a significant cost. Easier to just attach a dedicated workstation on a cart and block that computer from ever accessing the internet.

Drivers sometimes determine the OS. I worked at a place that got a new SL3000 tape library ~2007. StorageTek which was bought by Sun a couple years before I think. Anyways a ~$200k tape library and it was running Win2k. Just seems funny to drive a $40k file server with a 32 core Sparc/Solaris system and have the hardware running Win2k.

Here's an idea make a laptop where the long direction is the vertical. Stability is probably the limitation but 16:10 would be great if the 16 was the height. Same size and shape of laptop cases would work the hinge would just be on another side and you'd have ~ a 13" laptop's keyboard on a 15" laptop form factor.

Look under: "unlocking value". There are pros and cons of being big. One of the cons (at least perceived) is that a big company tries to have "synergistic" sales sometimes at the expense of what is good for the product group. Example: the MS SQL server group might be able to make more money if they supported other OSs but the parent won't allow it. The cumulative amount of sales might be better since a lot of people stick with Windows because they want Office and use Office because they have Windows. For Blackberry as far as I can tell their big selling point back in the day would have been to spin off BBM and a security appliance that would support all vendors equipment. Anyways the games the transition teams/banks can play is trading the estimated synergistic sales against the hypothetical unrealized sales forgone because of corporate pressure.

Add to that the dillution of power/responsibility for success when you are just a 10M business unit in a 30B company, versus the whole pie, the reduction in innovation as financial and project controls get more formalized rather than just being a skunks works company trying to see if they can make their 100k market into a 100B one.

They'd do that for one version then the next version would have a "more easy to use" camera that comes without the screen.

The funny thing is that the first solution wasn' t just to have the camera hidden and a slot to pop it out when you need it for things like iMacs and laptops (where the user sits relatively close to the device). Going out of your way to make firmware to turn a light on whenever the camera is working regardless of the OS installed sounds like more work than just physically blocking the damn thing when you don't need it (like card readers have the little cover over the slot when not in use in a lot of systems). It seems pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that the first thing that someone wanting to spy on you will do is look for a way to disable that light. Where as a camera that can't see anything can't spy.

Or just say now downloading that stuff will cost you $1 per MB, or hand the keys to NSA/those that would like to sue. Or the flip side your ISP might start charging you onurous rates for both the initial download, the upload to the cloud provider then a download again when you really want to consume the content. Of course things are easier for people that own/produce the content but ... they are rare. For every nerd shooting uncompressed HD video there are a thousand nerds downloading HD porn/TV/games etc.

Yep. For example I worked at a cancer centre (radiation therapy). We had a $30k device whos drivers were written for Win 3.1. It is a niche product made by a research hospital. It was made years ago probably by doctoral student. They no longer work there and there isn't enough revenue to justify full time positions (only sell a few a year). So: Win 7 in XP compatiblity mode, didn't work, Win 7 running Virtual PC didn't work. Had to install real XP as a secondary boot and then run that in compatibility mode (16 bit driver). This is in an industry that hadn't even been into scale till ~late 80's. So how old do you think the drivers are going to be for a dentist's X-ray machine?