The real reason is probably a lot simpler: Cost.

Before you break ground on a single-family home in Pleasanton CA, you must cough up in excess of $125,000 (yes, 125 grand) in fees and permits.

I expect said fees and permits are even more expensive in San Francisco proper.

[For comparison, in Los Angeles County a home building permit is $38,000. Here in Montana it's from $50 to $2000 depending where you are.]

I'd say that his revision would have the direct effect of creating a more-effective police state, where the government need never fear The People.

The whole POINT of the 2nd Amendment was that government SHOULD fear The People.

I don't really have a specific argument about the numbers. Truthfully I couldn't pay attention long enough to really find a flaw in the argument. That said, my gut is telling me author is wrong.

Damn, why didn't I think of this?

People, is it true? Would the market bear a "Republican Technology News" site?

Why on earth should I really care what kind of CPU is in my laptop, *especially* if the OS runs on either x86 or ARM?

I think the whole point of the discussion here is that both hardware architectures and OS choices are becoming increasingly fungible, and that trend may only accelerate...

I'm with you on the quality digitizer/touchscreen, though...

Yep, and you need a 30-100 MB app for pretty much every little task you do. A good OS, built the right way, provides a strong set of basic tools that can be used together to do almost anything the user wants. Personally, I *do* want a real OS on a tablet - because there are just way too many real-world tasks that tablets either can't do at all or can only do with ridiculous levels of complexity and frustration. Real filesystems are just the beginning. FWIW, I'd rank the usability of tablet OSes for real-world use as first, Full Windows, then WinRT closely followed by IOS, with Android bringing up the rear. If there were a Chrome tablet (and WHY ISN"T THERE?), it would likely fall between the two Windows versions, and Ubuntu could well grab the lead if they can find any good hardware to optimize for...

Mark Shuttleworth and the rest of the Ubuntu guys get this, and that's why they're plowing ahead no matter the naysayers. Also, "full-fat" doesn't necessarily mean actually fat - IIRC, the first Unix System 7 CAD workstation I used had 4 MB of RAM, a huge 40 MB hard disk, and a stunning 1 MIP 68K processor with an incredible 1280x1024 display. Today's mobile processors have compute power only found in supercomputers not many years ago. Look at Puppy to see how slim you can make a "full-fat" Linux OS, even with a modern kernel and apps...

BTW, no OS exists in today's tablet/GUI world to let you easily snap together your own tools from a rich set of components - that requires GUI integration of the stream/operator paradigm as implemented in UNIX (but with different syntax and semantics making the gozintas and gozouttas intuitive), transparently merged with the browser and able to leverage not only local, but also remote web assets and applications. Add touch and non-touch dynamic gestural interfaces, and you've really got something...

Microsoft is really onto something with the whole Surface Pro idea, and It boggles my mind that not a single one of the "regular" OEMs have managed to build anything even in the same league. This product alone is justification for Microsoft being in the non-peripheral hardware business, despite the OEM friction it undoubtedly causes.

The Surface Pro is further proof that Steve Jobs was flat wrong when he said of iPad competitors, "If you see a stylus, they blew it!"

First of all, a quality digitizer pen is not a stylus. Second, and far more importantly, there are *really* good reasons why we gave up drawing and writing with rocks and fingers, and started using sticks, brushes, and pens instead...

Windows on the tablet is pretty darn attractive - I've tried iPad, Android and Windows RT tablets, and *ALL* of them are missing things you really need. (Decent local filesystems and the ability to *fully* support the Internet, even for ugly-ass things like Flash and PDF, as well as reasonable printing support (RT only supports new printers) aren't optional.

BTW, this is really an argument for a full OS, not specifically for Windows. Good hardware for a full Ubuntu tablet (not Nexus crap, which is designed for a crippled OS like Android) could be a game-changer, too...

I've got a friend who says the Surface Pro 2 is not only the best tablet out there, but also quite simply the best and most useful computing device of *any* kind he's ever owned, especially with the docking station.

If Microsoft sees fit to build a Surface Pro 3 with the same awesome digitizer (required for quality sketching and/or artwork), more/cheaper storage, at least 8 GB of RAM and a 13-14" Pixel-like screen, at roughly the same weight as the Pro 2, I'll be standing in line to throw more money at them than I've spent on a computer in years...

I write for and read a niche publication related to an obscure hobby of mine (related to model trains) and it actually sells very well and they still pay well for contributions. Mostly because the target audience is retirees who are of a generation that are used to and comfortable reading the printed page, and are happy to pay for it. Many of these people also supplement their subscription with online forum discussions, which has changed the nature of the magazine. The primary focus is on lengthy how-to articles that people would not normally compile for free and post online due to the time and effort involved, but are happy to put into print because they (and I) are being paid for it. Club announcements and updates and stuff are less needed thanks to online forums.

The one thing the magazine has not done is embraced a digital version and made their archives available digitally. One magazine that has done this to great effect is Model Railroader. Rather than collect stacks of back issues, you can now get the whole set online or on discs. One of the main issues depends on what the original contract with the writers looked like. If it did not have a 'and all future media' type clause, you would have to seek individual permission from each contributor to make the back issues available digitally. That has been one of the things holding back the particular magazine I write for. I myself am all in favor of making back issues available digitally. At the very least they could sell a digital edition beginning with new issues, with a new contract for the writers that includes it.

As far as mainstream periodicals, I occasionally like to pick up a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times when at an Airport, but 99.9% of my current news intake happens online these days. Financial Times of London is a good one, but again can be had online.

what I do read exclusively in printed form is books. I just like them, and I like to keep the best ones for re-reading later. Mine will be among the last generation to prefer this most likely.

You are comparing this device to other devices that honestly lacked the kind of popular appeal that modern tablets do. Sure, it was running a great OS for the time but that OS did not have the kind of app ecosystem that the iPad does. That ecosystem is pretty critical to the popularity of the device.

and yes, check the UID, I was on line in 2000, quite a bit before that actually, and frankly the web was not the most interesting place for the mainstream. Sure, for hard core geeks it was great but that was not going to be enough to kick off a serious change in the way normal people interacted with technology.

When the iPad came out we already had a really rich web experience available, people had already started supporting mobile safari extensively thanks to the iPhone and there was an existing ecosystem of high quality apps available and plenty of companies and engineers available who's goal was to grow that eco system. This device had none of that and without that it was not going to be successful. Honestly I am not so sure that the iPad would have even managed to take off if it were not for the iPhone that came before it, to pull it off when all wireless bandwidth was slow and expensive and the web was a mostly static place to read news and there were no social networks to speak of.... most people would not have use for such a device.

Plus, we still don't know what it would have cost, which is another huge barrier to adoption.

So you're say that when I, as a (professional ;-) programmer, create a chunk of code that tests for something, you don't think I should get any credit for what it discovers, because it's the code that discovered it, not me. This pretty much shoots down the value of nearly everything I do, because like most programmers, I spend most of my time writing and running my test suites; the actual product itself usually takes only a small percent of my work time.

Maybe I'm overly arrogant, but I disagree with this. I think that whatever a chunk of code does, the credit (or blame ;-) should go to the programmer, not the code or the cpu.

By similar reasoning, we might argue that the "many eyes" never actually discover any bugs at all, because the real work is done by the brain behind the eyes, not the eyes themselves. And with computer bugs, the human brain almost never figures out the bugs; it merely writes code that does appropriate testing, providing the brain with information that it could never have figured out by itself.

This is sorta the inverse of the old saw that guns don't kill people; it's saying that the human that pulled the trigger should get no blame for a killing, because it was the bullet (or maybe the trigger mechanism) that actually did the job.

Honestly, looking at the design of that thing, I am not so sure it had a viable market. There were few wireless networks set up in 2000 it wasn't a given that every home had one. Cell data was expensive and slow. The device seems unwieldy and large and the controls don't look like they would be particularly easy to use. Also, what OS does it run, can it do anything but surf the web? Was the web on its own interesting enough in 2000 to make this a killer device? No streaming movies and TV shows, Spotify or any of those interesting services.

Finally, what was the price going to be? Back then 500 would have been a tough sell and I would not be surprised if this device was more expensive than that.

Timing really is everything. The tech needed to reach a certain level and honestly the web had to reach the point where having it in your hand and on the go was valuable to consumers. Sure you can't just ask people what they want but you also have to consider that a lot of things were different 13 years ago.

assuming its a touch screen at all.

If you can get the amendment passed, then it is by definition constitutional. I'm not a big fan of either the 16th or 17th Amendments, but the federal income tax and direct election of senators are both absolutely constitutional to even the most hard-line strict constructionists.

Then prove that your premise is true.

Have you ever heard the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword"? It's not just a pithy one-liner. The press can be used to influence the thinking of many people. The reason a large militia gathered in Nevada was because the event got press. It doesn't matter how many guns Cliven Bundy had, of what caliber, or magazine size, he could not have turned away a heavily-armed federal police force of 200 people by himself. The press is much more powerful, for good or ill, than firearms by themselves. Technological advancements have only made it that much more powerful. That's why oppressive governments have to control both the firearms and the press. You can't effectively control one without controlling the other.

Why? Because you say so? I live in Texas, and feel relatively secure from home invasion because criminals here know that any given home in Texas has a good chance of being well armed with modern, effective firearms. That's not to say that violent home invasions never happen here, just that they happen quite a bit less. Compare that to Australia, where the government confiscated all the guns to keep people safe, and violent home invasions skyrocketed. And since you seem to think that gun-free places are safer, consider how quickly these senseless mass shootings would end if more people were armed. Take the recent one in Fort Hood. Would that guy have been able kill and injure so many people if we didn't disarm our own soldiers (who are well trained in handling firearms) on their home bases? Instead of hiding helplessly, the victims could have quickly taken the guy down and not been victims. I personally find it very disconcerting that the only thing standing between a crazy gunman and an elementary school is a piece of paper that says it's illegal to carry a gun on campus. The gunman doesn't care about that law, but he knows that the campus is full of lawful citizens, which means he knows he will be the only person who is armed there. You don't see a lot of mass shooting rages at the NRA convention, or at your local Bass Pro Shop.

If you are personally afraid of guns, that's your business. I'm not going to try to force you to own one. But you have not convinced me that I would be better off living in a society where law-abiding citizens are disarmed.