There are lots of posts here claiming that they aren't using like to like comparisons. The point of the post isn't that an iPhone is getting better battery life than a MS Exchange Server, the point of the article is that in almost every scenario you can match up, Android/iOS/OS X comes out clearly ahead. And this is the case regardless of what hardware or type of hardware you're comparing. Put Windows on a MacBook and it's going to get lower battery life... a-ha, it's a driver issue, you say, ok, but spec out a similar PC notebook and it will have lower battery life than the MacBook.

In other words, Microsoft doesn't have a battery life on the Surface RT or any other product problem, Microsoft has a battery life problem. Why is that?

But couldn't someone from a distance have used a super strong magnet to turn the radio on and then from a distance transmit the "off" signal?

I'm not talking about someone doing this from another country, but perhaps near enough where Cheney would've have been.

It seems like there was enough of a possible threat that he, and his doctors, felt the need to do this.

"My last two phones and the one I have now had and have micro-USB."

That's not very many. I've probably had just less than 100 different devices, and about 5-10% have been damaged. However, many cables have gotten damaged.

Worse though is that some cables and some ports don't want to work together.

Some devices, like my Motorola Bluetooth headphones, I feel like I have to jam it in so hard that it's going to break each time, though it hasn't yet.

I think this is also one of those things where Micro-USB is better than what I could come up with. It works, and you can live to deal with needing to wake up your girlfriend by turning on the lights, and figuring out how to plug it in at night. Likewise, the fragility isn't bad enough to be a consistent problem, even if it *feels* much worse than it actually is.

Try using the Lightning connector, and even better the Lightning connector on actual Apple cables with the hard-coil. It's pretty sweet to be able to plug in a device one-handed and completely in the dark on a single shot.

Honestly, the convenience of this makes up for the messed up inconvenience of having to also carry around 30-pin, Micro-USB, and Mini-USB.

I would definitely like to see Apple license Lightning rather than adopt Micro-USB.

"USB itself will only plug in one way, polarized wall plugs only plug in one way, and I don't remember anyone bitching when they went from non-polarized to polarized wall plugs."

The difference there though is that in both cases, for the most part, it easily plugs in one way and definitely doesn't plug in the other way. Furthermore, for the most part those connections are static. Meaning most people just need to think "larger blade goes in on the left". However, have you ever been in an older partially renovated house? It is annoyting trying to reach behind the furniture to plug in a lamp in a socket that you don't know if it's polarized or not, and if so which direction it was placed in.

Likewise with USB-A, the icon usually faces up, or vertically towards you or to the right. Again you're dealing with a static thing, so it's always facing the same way and very easy to detect when you're trying to go the wrong way.

"I would guess that most problems with any plugs stem from users pulling them out holding the wire rather than the plug."

That, and coiling up cables incorrectly, but Micro-USB connectors definitely aren't as robust as Lightning even when used properly.

So if I get his premise...

Conventional advertising is good because good companies with good products can afford the ads.

Ok, I guess I can kind of buy that if you through in a bunch of caveats and exceptions.

But where he's losing me is on targeted ads being bad because they're too efficient and thus lower the bar to enable any advertiser.

I understand the point... I once took out some very cheap ads that were targeted towards my nephew for an imaginary fake product in an elaborate prank.

However, that only worked because there was no competition. Nobody else bid on ad placements for the exact criteria that I knew perfectly defined my nephew and would result in him seeing that specific ad.

In real-world usage, if I'm constantly searching for shoes, I'm going to get all kinds of shoe vendors bidding to target me. Jimmy's Shoes won't be able to bid as high as Nike, and if what I want are Kenneth Cole, it won't matter anyway.

Even if I'm wrong and bidding isn't a factor, won't we just adjust to discrediting ads the same way that we discredit spam from Nigeria? Won't we rely more on editorial and user reviews as well as brands we've experienced and trust?

I used to fly a Cessna 172. From the front seats, there's good visibility over the dash when flying. When taxiing, your view is a little obscured, especially if you're short, but it's definitely manageable. Of course, he didn't have to deal with that.

I'm not sure why the tower didn't work with him to turn on his landing lights...although the story seems to be a bit odd... his first attempt was aborted because of being blinded by the setting sun, and then his 4th attempt was "in the pitch dark". That's a really long time.

Anyway, even without the landing lights, visibility at night is still good enough with giving ambient light.

Still, pretty cool dude to be able to do this... more so that he didn't crash from stalling. He mentioned he did stall, but recovered. It sounds like he had at least *some* knowledge of what it took to fly.

This blurb is different from the article. I don't see in the article what Google itself is doing to correct the problem. To me, it seems simple on their part, just band justmugshots.com and whatever other domains are being used. That's what I was hoping to see, but nope, the Do Know Evil company is still not only including mug shot sites in their image search results, but they're unjustifiably highly ranked.

Here's my problem...

My name shows up in image search results. Great here's what "first_name last_name" looks like. However, the top results are a bunch of mugshots. Ok, so I've made sure my actual image is properly SEO'd and linked to from a bunch of sites, but still, the mugshots are showing higher ranked images (of not me, but people with the same name and in some cases they look similar).

How are the mugshots so highly ranked? Are people really sending inbound links to them? I don't think so, but even if they were, Google should be banning these domains.

And no, this wouldn't be censorship... besides being a company and not the government, Google wouldn't be preventing the sites or the information from being available, but simply doing two things:
1) Justifiably punishing sites that obviously broke the rules in terms of SEO.
2) Protecting people a little bit more from being extorted.

Well, as you pointed out, it has that and it hasn't been selling.

For me those things don't really matter...

USB - I can print just fine with AirPrint. Mouse... I vaguely remember seeing one of those last decade.

SD card slot - There's an adapter, but why bother when I can just use WiFi hard drives and WiFi SD cards?

Video out port. As long as I'm buying an adapter, what's the difference in buying an adapter for the iPad versus another for the Surface? I've rarely used mine since AirPlay is much easier.

What would make the Surface RT sell is a time machine so they could go back in time before iOS and Android came to dominate the market.

The RT version is dead, and Microsoft should give up on it as all of the Windows RT partners have.

The iPhone just brought in more revenue over the weekend than the entire enterprise value of Nokia.

I'm sorry if we're boring you with this.

I've been using Pandora since shortly after launch. I've been using iTunes Radio since the beta launched.

Generally I prefer iTunes Radio, although there are some custom stations I've made in Pandora that I can't seem to get the same level of match quality in iTunes Radio. Usually the opposite is true though, the stations in iTunes seem to be better matched and have more songs rotating.

It's also hard to beat that iTunes Radio is commercial free with iTunes Match, which I have anyway, so it's just a bonus. On the other hand, Pandora's premium service without ads is incredibly dirt cheap.

For me, it all depends on what Apple wants to do with content as a business. If it uses content to sell hardware, then I'd imagine iTunes Radio will be iOS and iTunes (Mac/Windows) only. However, if Apple discovers that content can be a worthwhile business in of itself, it could license iTunes Radio and make it available on other platforms (as well as their TV shows, movies, and other content).

If they license, then great, my Sonos system will likely get iTunes radio as well as the bazillions of other smart devices I have which get Pandora now. In that case Pandora (and others would likely die).

The reason is that if Apple licenses iTunes Radio or develops apps for a broad range of non-Apple platforms, Apple will have a mega-advantage in several ways besides just the brand advantage. Apple already has bazillions of credit cards active on file with Apple IDs making it very easy for people to join in. Apple has bazillions of people buying music every day and has been tracking their purchases through Genius Playlists for years now, so they have a huge-ass database of matched music and are well equipped to provide better smart stations. Apple also has the ability to bundle advertising with other ad sales, instead of just having it be a smart radio ad buy. And of course Apple makes money through increased music (and other content) sales as well as feeding the overall ecosystem. I just don't see how anyone could compete with that, unless Apple just decides not to license or build on other platforms.

"There was a single codecs directory which contained the codec files."

Well then, I must be reading this wrong, because it makes no sense how this was special in any way. It's exactly how QuickTime has *always* worked. I'm not even sure I could come up with a different way to do this... put some codec extensions in the Desktop directory and others in the Trash... that will fool them!!!

Instead of breaking up Microsoft, wouldn't it be easier to just shut everything down that wasn't Windows, Office, and Exchange?

Arguably, the Xbox could survive on its own, although not if burdened with the billions in losses it accumulated over the years before it turned a profit.

I was working for a company in 2001 when I got laid off. I'm tempted to name the company or at least the former CEO of the company in order to praise them. The company is still very much in business.

9/11 hit right in the middle of the 2 weeks, so the CEO gave us an additional week.

This was really a big deal. Not only in terms of the money earned during that time, but also to get our stuff together, finish projects and hand stuff off to those who wouldn't be laid off. Sure, it was a given we'd also be working on putting our portfolios and resumes together, but it really was a decent and appreciated way to go out and help leave something behind that could be successful (and maybe re-employ us again).

I've also been given notice when the company was going under. The CEO was straight with telling us how much runway we had and things weren't looking good for a while. He was trying to sell the company and we could hang on, but each week would be a risk. Most of us did, and the company was eventually purchased with all of us who stayed given jobs.

I've always given 2 weeks notice, if not more. I don't know why you wouldn't. I could see if someone offered a job where I had to start right away, but I've never been offered a job under those terms. Everyone expects that you'll want to start as soon as possible, but that would be at least 2 weeks.

I guess the answer to the question could be best given if the question is rephrased... when is it ok to act like a jerk? When you're getting treated worse by even bigger jerks.

Wow, I'll be the first to admit that 6 million Surface tablets that Microsoft had to do write-offs on was bat-shit insane, but I do think Microsoft needs more than 3 units on hand.

My brother's girlfriend's cousin from Canada wants to buy one, that would be 33% of their inventory right there.

Seriously though, what is this guy thinking? Being a bigger failure is somehow going to result in people wanting to buy more? It's not like the lack of apps, being ridiculously late to market, and being over-priced had anything to do with it.

Nah... Triple-down!!!

But that's not exactly what PBS did. They provide an open/standards way of accessing the content via the Web. They've then looked at developing native apps, and saw that it was easy enough on iOS, but not so much on Android.

Should a public organization not do any platform unless it does them all? While that may sound "fair", it's potentially restricting them in ways that would be unreasonable. For example, if they could do Android and iOS, would the same rule apply for people complaining about Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS?

To me, it makes sense for public organizations to go with open/standards where applicable and not do proprietary solutions until afterwards, but once they have the open/standards solution done, it makes sense to work on proprietary solutions based on reaching the most amount of people per dollar spent on the project.

I agree, I'm wondering too what site he's using as a comparison. Wasn't Safari the first, or one of the first to pass Acid3? And I know the Acid3 test isn't without criticism but Safari was scoring 100/100 when IE was scoring 20/100.

I pretty much build in Safari, check in Chrome and Firefox, which will always work and then allocate twice as much time as all of that took to make it work with all the versions of IE I need to test for.