Well, if you walked up to a smoker and vaccinated them like this ... they would still be addicted, and have no way of alleviating that.

As an ex-smoker, had someone done that to me, I might have had to kill them

Quitting smoking is hard, is sucks, and it takes months if not years for the craving to go away. The smallest thing can make you go back to wanting one.

The ability to get nicotine from an alternate source than smoking is not something to be underestimated, and for many of us is the only way we can really quit.

I rank this about as good as locking someone in a room and waiting for the screaming to stop. It's simply doing nothing at all about the fact that your brain and body are still going "where is it? how about now? can we have some? what about now? Why isn't there any? How do we get some? WHY can't we have any?"

A smoker on forced cold turkey quitting is NOT a person you want to be around.

I was really hoping they could throw away the cruft and start fresh, like Android and iOS did.

The way forward isn't slavishly doing the same thing you've been doing for 25+ years.

To me, this just entrenches that we're stuck with every bit of crap baggage Microsoft has been carting around, and that they will essentially keep doing the exact same thing.

So, I like them for a desktop or a server ... but I think they're going to fail miserably for mobile devices.

Essentially they're just going to ram through the iceberg instead of doing anything innovative. I honestly question if Microsoft could write an OS from scratch like Android.

Well, the in 80s I was mostly in elementary/middle school. In the 90s I was working in the tech industry. But I've been using the internet long enough to have used bang path addressing and UUCP and the like.

I don't simply dismiss all technology out of hand -- I actually do look at to see if it adds any benefit to my life.

And, in this case, I conclude the Internet of Things is crap, and Eric Schmidt is full of shit -- everything he says is the delusional ramblings of a billionaire who expects to make money from this.

In which case, I neither trust his vision, nor his intent.

The future, as envisioned by the greedy assholes who expect to profit from it, is generally a meaningless pile of self-serving crap. And Eric Schmidt is no exception.

As usual, you're working hard to spin things in the most negative light you can.

Honestly, it's not that hard.

ARM is a power-efficient platform, but nothing prevents Intel (or someone else) from producing a power-efficient x86/x64 platform.

And you know what, insisting on doing that basically means we're stuck with the same architectures and other baggage we've had for years. It's corporate inertia and laziness.

Love 'em or hate 'em, both iOS and Android did new things on new platforms, and did them differently -- apps became smaller, with less of a footprint, and less resource hungry. We went back to small simple things which did one thing. Microsoft will have us with a 4GB install of Office because that's all they can imagine.

The entire mentality of this is "hey, we're the big players, why the fuck should we innovate when we can keep repackaging the same crap we've been selling for years?". It's the same stuff as always, when it has the potential to be more.

My work laptop and my tablet are very different animals, with very different levels of resources, on very different platforms, and used for quite different things.

What I'm hating on is the dinosaurs who are giving us the same stuff they've always given us and acting like they're doing something cool.

I think it's utterly pathetic that Intel and Microsoft just want to repackage the desktop ... because I think that means they've missed the point, and are just trying to redefine the market to match what they do.

Which is why having a single OS for the mobile and desktop market means that Microsoft can't see past their own noses, and are refusing to do anything new and interesting. Just make sure we can have fucking spreadsheets.

No thanks. At least Apple and Google have done some new and interesting things, and changed the landscape. Microsoft is just trying to keep us firmly rooted in the 90s.

Well, what you call "paying attention to reality" is a side effect of terrible vision/planning. It's not an accomplishment to stop selling a product which completely missed the mark in the first place.

Microsoft thinks they can tell the market what it is they want, and the keep getting it wrong.

Hell, they release copycat products, and they still keep getting it wrong -- because thy insist on putting their own stamp on things, and are stil stuck in the "Yarg, computers are for Exchange and Office".

I'm pretty sure RT was more or less DOA. Along with their phone.

And they keep doubling down on the idea that all of these tablets will be just another x86 machine so they don't have to build anything new.

I think Microsoft has been suffering from a stunning lack of vision for years -- at least, as far as that 'vision' connects with reality. It's hard to think a company with so much resources can be so inept at understanding the markets they're trying to get into.

Well, I assume YouTube videos and Facebook (or whatever the hep kiddies are running) .... but, yeah.

Given that Windows RT and RT 8.1 were designed for power economizing devices sporting 32-bit ARM architecture, and never had the same functionality -- to many users' frustration -- as full-blown Windows 8 and 8.1, it comes as little surprise that the RT versions of the operating system should be left out of the latest update loop

In the Microsoft view of the world, all devices will become power hogs which are comparable to a desktop, because they've completely missed the fucking point.

I think this is why MS's "one platform for everything" notion is complete crap ... a mobile device should have less resources and hardware than a full on desktop.

But to Microsoft, they can only envision a desktop PC ... which really makes all those "I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" commercials more hilarious, because it really seems like Microsoft just doesn't get it. They have yet to see past Exchange and Office and understand what most people actually do with these things.

You know, I'm long since past the point where I fetishize technology. In fact, it often bores me to death, because it seems like it's technology for the sake of technology and doesn't add value to my life -- just clutter.

I don't carry a smart phone ... well, I do, but it hasn't got a data plan. It gets used to send text messages mostly. It has wifi, but it's mostly off.

I don't see personal value in controlling my lights from my smart phone -- or, for that matter, lights which change color. And definitely not color changing lights which are networked and talking to my smart phone.

Color changing networked lights connected to my smart phone learning my habits and schedule, reporting that upstream to google and doing who knows what else that it's not telling me about and signalling to my fridge that the butter should be softened because I might be home soon ... well, I'm afraid you've lost me at that point.

In fact, I find the prospect downright creepy.

Sorry, but I don't see my mission in life as owning every conceivable piece of technology and integrating it so tightly into my life that a power outage is going to leave me in the fetal position in the corner as I suddenly am disconnected from the world and can't turn on the lights.

So, I'll sit on my front porch shaking my first at you guys and your doo-dads and focus on things which don't end up with me having a chip implanted up my ass which lets the toilet seat know to start pre-warming because the frequency of sphincter contractions indicates an impending poo, and tells google to give me ads for toilet paper because I'm running low.

I'm afraid I simply don't care enough to play that silly game. :-P

Not get off my damned lawn!!

That's kind of my point ... most of the stuff I see from futurists assumes we have the resources and luxury to start everything from scratch to build the thing of the future.

The city of the future where everything glows, is connected, and is awesome? Yeah, right, we'll start all of our cities from scratch just for your magic technology. More accurately, you have the slums where this isn't, and the shiny new stuff where the rich live.

Same for this. Does he really think people are going to replace every damned thing in their lives so that it can be automated and interconnected? I'm sorry, but only a moron believes that. If I want to "interact" with my lamp I can walk over to the damned thing.

The entire article is pipe-dreams from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others about how they're going to usher in a marvelous new future and make use of our data.

I'm afraid my answer to those entities is "go fuck yourself", because having "clear, pragmatic, market-based regulation" is code for "how can corporate douchebags guarantee access to our data for their own ends and profits while ensuring they don't have pesky laws which limit what they can do".

I'm afraid these entities are the last ones I'd entrust with my data, or to be driving the conversation about the limitations which need to be placed on them.

So, as I've said all along ... Internet of Things is designed to benefit the corporations who think it's great, is predicated on us all paying tons of money to buy crap which has this enabled, with the implicit assumption this is what the rest of us want, and that somehow this actually benefits us.

And, as usual, I find myself thinking I don't think this benefits me at all. It's just more apps and cell phones, and pointless tracking and analytics to allow asshole billionaires like Schmidt to buy another fucking yacht.

Yawn, whatever there, Eric ... more bullshit futurism about how the wealthy will live.

I don't think people really want the internet of things, and every time someone says "ZOMG, look at teh future" I mostly think they're talking out of their ass.

It makes a great sales pitch, but generally futurists are snake oil salesman and marketers claiming their pet technology will change the world, but which would require zillions of dollars and some massive fundamental changes to everything around us.

And the rest of us will have plain old lamps and sofa which aren't telling everything to Google about our daily lives.

The petty ramblings of billionaire technologists really is mostly drivel.

And, by induction it's perfectly safe until proven otherwise.

Because Monsanto et al paid off the right people, so their stuff is presumed to be safe as a default.

A mutation in the DNA undoes the genetic engineering and we've got a new strain of e. coli in the wild.

Heresy!! How dare you suggest the people who make GMOs haven't solved all these problems?

In the absence of evidence this is risky, we have to conclude this is safe. Because that's how we've been doing it all along.

Why do you hate progress so much?

I, for one, welcome our new mutated GMO e. coli overlords.

Old men like young boobies ... this is an evolutionary fact.

I once had to have "the talk" with my father ... Dad, I know you want to sneak a peak at boobies when mom isn't looking, but most of those sites are really dangerous ... if you're going to look at boobies, use this browser which won't run scripts or anything, and which runs as a different profile. I've bookmarked a few sites to get you started. And no matter what you the ad claims, don't click it.. ;-)

Always practice safe click.