So every single reply has been "don't use your computer for work", or "make them give you one". I have to wonder if you ever read slashdot. That you even asked the question in the first place makes me think that you actually do not know *why* everyone is posting the same answer:

How many times have we read about "stupid companies" that let their employees wander around with sensitive data on unencrypted devices, like credit card numbers and health care information.

Very small bricks, one assumes. Or perhaps you should work out more. Oh, wait, where am I? Sorry!

I agree. The iPad, however, doesn't.

I was ill for two days this week. I grabbed my iPad and watched some new shows that I've not had time to check out. ABC's iPad app let me watch Castle and V in 720p. Then I watched some movies on Netflix. I also bought the latest book from Steven Erikson using iBooks.

It wasn't too heavy.
It has a bigger screen than my netbook, and its stunning.
It didn't get too hot like my netbook does when watching movies. I *hate* frying my balls.
The wife's netbook can't watch 720p movies at all.
I didn't have to have it plugged in, so I could move it about easily while I tried to get comfortable. Charged it overnight.
When I was done puking, I wiped it clean with disinfectant.

I'm not sick all the time, of course. The wife uses it and her iPhone. Her netbook hasn't been touched for months. The iPad is "just" a more usable iPhone for her. Its set up with her email, not mine (and she did it herself - amazing what she can do when I'm not around). I will be buying two more for our children.

Why would it not *be* your cell phone? Motorola Droid: linux, 5mp camera, 3G + wifi, battery.

A jammer would work against the hacker version I just wrote for my Android, but for these devices to really take off, they would have to be immune to such a trick, which is extremely easy to do assuming the military would allow the public to own such a device.

However, if everyone had one, at least it would reduce the chances of some prick in a bar who thinks violence is an acceptable expression of offense, jammer or no jammer. And of course, turning on the jammer would be useful warning in and of itself.

The "right" to not be recorded benefits no one but criminals. It means proof of a crime cannot be admitted as evidence. If *everything* was recorded all the time, we'd live in a much better, and freer world.

Well there was a study that I read once (but I'm fucked if I can find a link to it) that measured people's IQs, and their perceived IQ. People with lower IQ universally thought they did well on the tests. People with high IQs thought they did worse. Specifically, there was an inverse correlation between how well a person thought they did and their IQ.

This appears to be matched by experience. If someone tells me a task is going to be easy, or that they can do it "no problem", then 99/100 its going to be a train wreck.

Caveat: if there is a manager in the room, its ok to say something is going to be easy because managers get scared easy. I'm talking about if its just a bunch of programmers talking. :-)

I always find it interesting when academics write papers about things that games programmers have been doing for years. Not that we had a client-server memory management thread mind you, because that would be fucking crazy, but preallocation of memory, and avoiding locks and syncs etc. Seriously, if you have a program that does 13 million allocations per second (see Table II), wouldn't a better memory manager be on your list?

No but you can use LogMeIn.

Why not just write an App :-)

But my wife loves it. I think CmdrTaco forgot to read the manual, or just assumed he knows more than any one else.

1. GPS: It knows your location. Maps asked if it. Could get your location. If you had hit Yes, you would have found. Good job you knew better, eh, Cmdr! Hit No because it cant possibly work!

2. The keyboard. I make only slightly more mistakes typing using this keyboard than my regular one. But since the keyboard has correction built in it usually makes more sense than myusual emails.

3. Grandmas. It is NOT a PC replacement thank goodness. My wife loves it. So much easier than the Eee or our 14" notebook.

Are you some M$ schlep paid to get a post on here so you can say "Look, even the slashdot kids think java sucks!"

Android: java.
GWT: java.
Groovy: JVM.

Shouldn't the article be "The struggle to keep windows relevant?" or "the desktop"?

I'm writing java right now (ok, no, not *right now*) because it has the tools I need to get shit done. I use C#, C++, PPC, ARM, etc when I need to.

Am I missing something? Is java going tits up?

Jamie

Thats funny, coz after programming C# for 6 years I started to use java, and I find that the libraries available are much better. C# is a nicer language, but Java has tons of really good open source "stuff", like spring, hibernate, and mina. The XML stuff bothered me at first, because I'm used to Visual Studio: if I had classes referenced in XML and I refactored I was fucked. With any java editor worth its salt, e.g. IntelliJ, Eclipse, any given XML format is understood and refactored accordingly. Add Maven2 to that and I spend my time solving problems, not reinventing the wheel.