Never, ever, anywhere should you gloat about your security, we are ALL vulnerable. If you think otherwise and gloat about it you only increase your risk.

How could you have an "objective" and controlled study of this phenomenon if you use subjects of which the participants have at least partially formed an opionion and bias? I'm not denying that this psychological situation exists, but this "study" hardly proves anything. With the topics they used here, all that they have done is to identify existing political thought.

it's actually thinner than the Citizen chronometer I usually wear

well, it's lighter and thinner than the Citizen chronometer I had been wearing, and the 18 hours or so I've worn it so far (including while sleeping), the flat screen hasn't been an issue. It lies very comfortably and unobtrusively on my wrist. Yeah, a curved screen would have been somewhat better, I'll agree. And yes, a VERY limited version of metro is there, it works for this purpose.

Go ahead and accuse me of being a fanboy, but this is the first smartwatch in my view to hit the right balance of functionality and design that I would be willing to wear regularly. It's function because MS didn't overreach and try to duplicate the smartphone in a tiny wrist device, it's an adjunct. It's also the first wearable not hideously designed like some sort of oversized geek bling. So go ahead and hate away MS haters, this is a good device and MS squarely hit the mark for me at least.

100,000 Model T's will beat a 100 Cadillacs in the car business every time.

You are correct in all that you say here. The question still comes down to market share and whether MS was willing to devote the support and development resources to a product (Alpha based systems) that at the time was less than 1% of the total market. Could they ever have turned a profit in that scenario? Not likely. Like so many other instances, quality does not always win over quantity I suppose. Alpha was a better platform, I have no doubt, but that wasn't enough to make it a winner. Power and MIPS were also solid platforms at the time with some aspects superior to Intel, but no one was buying them, so similar end result.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/s... But seriously, give Walmart et al direct access to my bank account using 40 year old ACH technology? And trust them to have no security holes, fraud protection that credit cards provide on individual transactions, etc. etc. etc. I think not.

The only reason NT on Alpha failed was market share driven by DEC's hardware prices (the only source of Alpha based servers at the time) was about three times the equivalent i386 server from Dell or Compaq. I ran a shop fully populated with Alpha's running NT 3.1, 3.51 and NT4 at first, we switched to Dell i386 servers because of this. The DEC Alpha's did have very good availability and uptime, but for three times the cost, and very limited to non-existent third party software (backup software, security software, etc.). It was very hard to justify the expense. Not to mention being locked in to DEC for auxiliary hardware like NICs and RAID controllers which limited the selection severely, and again at triple the cost per unit. DEC Alpha's running NT were great runners, but their hardware pricing, selection and availability is what did it in, not weakness of the OS on that platform. Methinks you should get your facts and root causes for the failures in the market of the Alpha/NT product straight before you spout off.

actually, go back to 1994! Timex Datalink

Also not to mention that MS produced it's first "smart watches" in the mid 90's (Timex Datalink) in cooperation with Timex, and also the SPOT watches from middle of the last decade. Not exactly market success, especially the second one. But MS was working with watches, tablets, PDA's etc. back when Apple was a just few dollars away from collapse and bankruptcy

Timex data link watch (developed in partnership with MS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) that had synchronization capabilities with Outlook/Schedule+ in the early 90's, sync'd up via barcodes flashed on the screen of the PC. In the previous decade, SPOT watches ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) that offered limited data and IM capabilities through FM radio sub carrier signals. I owned on of the datalink watches for years, worked very well and reliably. Handy. The SPOT watches looked interesting to me tech wise, but couldn't justify the service cost.

We should remember that even though they weren't exactly world beaters or "killer apps", that MS has more experience with watches than any of the large tech vendors, including partnerships with existing conventional watchmakers. They could very well be the first to get something close to the right balance here, and the fact that they appear to be making it compatible with ALL of the major smartphone platforms is an encouraging sign. We shall see.

(former Navy nuc operator here) Although the direct technical skills from my time really don't apply. The idea of the "block diagram level" knowledge in your mind and the basic troubleshooting process instlled in me there in my training has served me VERY well over the course of my IT career. Not to mention the broad (not necessarily deep) mechanical system knowledge of things like power, HVAC, emergency generators, UPSs, etc. Data center infrastructure has a lot of similarity (at a smaller scale) to safety systems at a nuc plant. Yeah, not broad based the way the article says, but for my more specific part it worked for me!

I had thought Slashdot was a bastion for the (mostly) technically competent and (mostly) intelligent. Thanks for dragging it down mods....