Like the outrage about unions doing the same thing for the past decades? I dont think its right in either case. But if a union can form a PAC and donate to and lobby candidates/elected officials, its not any different for a company to do it too. Personally I'd rather see neither allowed...

As long as a Republican isn't in the White House? I suppose you have read all the new NSA directives since Obama has been in office that have upped the standard? Or are you referring to that time Obama signed the extension of the Patriot Act. Definitely higher standards there.

Its the same from both sides, don't obscure the truth that the gov in general is running around destroying privacy and other rights while people fight about what side of some random carpeted aisle the idea came from...

Expect that phones and all other "transmitting" devices (among other things) are completely banned from secure areas. If you carry a phone around in a SCIF you have bigger problems than the Steve Jobs tracking file.

Not true. See here: http://www.bgr.com/2011/01/19/verizons-htc-thunderbolt-will-support-simultaneous-voice-and-data-over-lte/

The first iteration of LTE will support this. The current issue with LTE is there is no standard for voice calls over it yet. So its data only and you make your call using the other side of the network. Just like how on VZ now the "3G" portion (EVDO) is data only and you still make a voice call over the 1X side.

This is happening to me on Chrome (Win or Mac) and Safari....

There are a couple of instances where this sucks for me. I have a Droid X as my personal phone

The worse is when your GF is yammering on and on about whatever and you don't have a data connection to play poke or check the scores or otherwise entertain your brain

Not that I disagree with this being slightly stupid but...

I don;t see a difference between your statement that buying Wintel meant x86 compatible HW and saying Quadroid means buying ARM HW. And if Intel had suddenly switched all its CPUs to some other arch, it still would have been Wintel. Because that meant more than the specifics of the HW.

Just becuase you say Intel doesn't give you an idea of the HW either. Is it 1 core or 8? Does it have hyperthreading... how big is the cache? Blah blah.. some exact thing as "Quadroid".

I would argue that everything you need to know is NOT in the name of the OS. Someone says "Android" and I still dont know what it is. Is its 1.6, or 2.1? Or do I get lucky and get 2.2? Is it a vanilla Google built, or is it HTC or Samsung or Moto screwing with the UI. Do I still get the stock apps, or am I stuck with the HW manufacturers apps?

Then lets add in carrier specific BS. Am I stuck with VZ crap I can't uninstall on top of Moto apps?

I would say better names would be VerMotoid, or HTCdroidmobile, or SamTTroid. The CPU is the least of the issues with android phones at the moment...

I know.. I've simply giving an example of an interesting way Altera lets you customize some of their IP. The Atom has an Intel core and an Altera FPGA... im doing some wishful thinking that maybe you would get some level of access to the CPU like you do with the NIOS.

FPGAs are useful as the actual digital circuits are re programmable. So you could theoretically patch your CPU and change the physical functionality of at least part of it. This would lead to all sorts of nice customizations.

One interesting aspect of the Altera soft CPU (NIOS), is that you can add custom HW directly into the execution unit, basically making your own HW instructions. Then you can generate an assembly instruction for it and use it right from your code. This lets you do nifty things like build a custom piece of HW to implement some arcane computation that is specific to your particular use of the HW and have it built right into the CPU. Wonder if there is this sort of setup here.. that would be pretty nice.

www.altera.com/literature/ug/ug_nios2_custom_instruction.pdf

.. the 3G unit is modular in the iPad (unlike a phone's, which is integrated with the radio)...

The 3G module IS a radio. The iPad #G baseband chip is the Infineon X-Gold 608, according to the data sheet it supports HSDPA, WCDMA, and EDGE. This is the same chip that could be used in a phone to make calls.

There is not "probably" about making a CDMA version. You just need a CDMA chipset instead of the X-GOLD 608 and you would need different drivers in iOS to support the different chip. But I would suspect there is a very clean interface in the code that makes this easy. The dialer app isnt making calls directly to the radio or something. Look at how Android's telephony stack is setup. And look at how they have phones on CDMA and UMTS networks... this isn't difficult....

Exactly, its a band aid for now until an EVDO (or maybe LTE?) iPad is ready.

However, I see this bundle as a net win. With a 3G iPad, you get data on your ipad, and thats it. Unless you jailbreak and use it as a hot spot. If you get the MiFi bundle (which is basically the same cost as an ATT 3G ipad) you get a router that you can connect other devices to besides the iPad. So if you have a laptop and an iPad, you are good on both counts.

Futher, this somewhat future proofs your data setup. You can't swap out the chipset in the iPad, so all those ATT 3G owners will be left out when LTE hits. But if you are using a MiFi... just get a 4G mifi and you are in business.

It's easy if you come from a C type of background or have been introduced to those concepts. Someone coming from, say, PHP, or .NET, and have never done any "lower" level programming will find Obj-C much more difficult to grasp. Two examples:

Pointers. Some people just can't this concept. Dereferencing, etc, are most likely alien concepts. Also, header files and the general mechanics of Obj-C/C/C++ are very different from Java/.NET type languages.

I'm an embedded SW engineer, I do a lot of my work in C/C++, so Obj-C wasn't a problem for me. That said, I really don't like Obj-C at all. Its rather annoying. The syntax for function calls, and func definitions is less intuitive than C. Also things like "+" and "-" to differentiate class vs instance methods seems silly.Why not use static like everything else does? And whats the deal with the @property and @synthesize stuff? Not really a fan.

The Fascinate (Samsung) looks pretty good on VZ as well. Ya, there is that stupid Bing problem right now, but there are several ways around it. If you use a custom launcher (like LauncherPro) you can get the Google widget.

Also, rooting is very simple, and you can remove all the Bing crap, plus load custom mods, etc. The screen is quite nice as well, and its super thin. I found the EVO a bit too bit, so the Facinate's slightly smaller screen is a perfect compromise.

That said, rumors keep popping up about VZ's LTE network coming online towards the end of the year. I get my upgrade in Nov, but might hold off and see if any 4G handsets start showing up...

Ya, I think the exclusivity with ATT hurts the market share. Many people don't want to go near ATT, or they are stuck with a huge contract break fee to leave where they are. Or like me, I have a family plan on VZ, but the other two lines just need to be regular non "smart phones", so it would be a huge pain to move all three of us to ATT just so I could get an iPhone.

Also, I think Apple is a bit more polarizing than Google/Android. Some people just don't want to buy apple.

And finally, when you have multiple HW manufacturers and multiple carriers it's seems that it would be easier to get a larger base established.

Its July and today's high was about 58 where I am. Then again it could be 105 next week.. or maybe snow.