You can get usb, video out and CD card slot for an iPad, you just have to buy the adapters. People who want them pay a few bucks for them People who don't need them, don't have to pay for them in the base device.

Actually, "get over yourself" implies you are madly in love with your own self-image, which is by definition an illusion which exists only in your own head. So "it is unhealthy and you really need to give it up" is appropriate advise.

This is entirely different from healthy self-confidence, a sign of which would be the ability to laugh at oneself, and not worry about what some web developer for BBC thinks about someone he's never met.

One problem with Quackwatch is that they tend to pick a small portion of the available studies for their "proof." If you don't carefully do your own research, what they write looks like science. But it's not. Throwing out the results which don't match a pet theory is not science.

Never underestimate the capability for humans to deceive each other (and themselves) where there is a lot of money, power or sex at stake....

Thank you. I was dumbfounded at all the people here throwing around LE and BE and having no f'ing idea what the terms actually meant. You saved me from having to break it to them.

No, I'm not new here, but obviously I had underestimated the level of arrogant incompetence rampant here.... I thought that at least when it came to basic structure of bits and bytes that the ./ posters should at least have a clue.

What remained of my innocence has been fully shattered now..

Yeah, the iPad hasn't sold at all...

There seem to be two camps. One who is happy with the 95% of what the iPad can do. And the other who is all pissed off that it isn't a full laptop. Maybe this is a new device category? (and there are ways to use a keyboard with an iPad, when needed; and that should work for similar Android/otherOS tablets as well)

So in other words, Android is a commercial success, but is poorly designed?

I've been programming embedded devices (including Linux systems using OpenEmbedded, etc), desktop systems from PCI drivers to GUIs for 20 years, so I understand the issues, but I haven't studied the Android architecture yet.

So I don't understand why this is such an issue. Sounds worse than a standard Linux distribution. Which again makes me wonder if Meego has a better chance long term because a lot of the KDE/Qt developers are involved. KDE just works on various size monitors, right?

Just seems like Android is not so well designed, and rushed out by a server software company, assuming that Java is the answer to everything.

I say that partially tongue in cheek, as I know Google uses a lot of other languages. Though they are fundamentally a server software company, not an embedded software company; which is bound to affect their gut instincts on architecture.

Almost every developer I talk to says they would like to do Android development, as they are interested in the concept of programming for an open phone, but they aren't interested in using Java to do it. Pretty much the way I feel. I still might, but I'd rather just use Qt in C++, so I'm looking forward to seeing how Meego does in the future.

Which partly asks the question: Can Intel get back market share in the phone/tablet market from the ARM hordes? I suspect the answer is that they have a chance for tablets, though phones will be more challenging. Maybe impossible with an x86 architecture, given the small batteries. But who knows...

Very good summary.

Quite likely the issue is that Google is a web company, and in that world new software is almost continuously rolled out.

So the decision makers don't have any person real-world experience with commercial devices containing firmware; which is very difficult to upgrade once it leaves the factory. (at least major version changes, for the reason you noted)

This actually makes me wonder if Meego will be a sleeper. Nokia IS a phone company, so they understand that world. Trolltech has been playing with real world customers in the embedded world for a long time.

Intel is in a different world, but I expect they are providing more funding than SW development. They will have decision making clout. But Intel is a hardware company, run by hardware engineers. And those guys think that once something goes out the door it's frozen forever. Very different then the Google web-based, "let's try this for a few hours in Ohio, and we can always roll it back if it doesn't work" way of thinking.

It's not so much about "thinking" but about one's own decades of personal experience, which affects how we see the world and what decisions we'll tend to make.

There are of course many factors which go into mass market acceptance, so I would not want to make any bets just yet about a dominant phone/tablet OS 5 years from now. But it will be interesting to watch.

Yeah, people made fun of me 30 years ago when I was a "health food freak" too. Being healthy simply wasn't considered "cool." Now most people in my age group have any number of medical issues because they drank the Big Pharma koolaid. But I'm still healthy, and never take any drugs. Not so much as aspirin. Neither does my 75 year old father, who has perfect health, while people his age are dropping like flies. (and yes, that includes our family; the difference being lifestyle habits, not genetics)

Not saying there aren't wackos in any field, and the non-mainstream health are is clearly full of them. But not being mainstream doesn't mean automatically wrong. When there are many billions at stake, the amount of misinformation is deafening. Much of it from people who mean well, but simply don't know any better. They are just repeating what "everyone knows."

There is actually now a whole lot of documented evidence for what many of us have said for decades about "natural healing" (ALL healing is natural; no man created the healing process, it is built-in to the system).

But you don't hear about them in the mainstream press. You also don't generally hear about the corruption in many studies by companies with a vested interest. FDA "experts" who are actually working for the drug companies, etc. If you dig there are tons of examples.

Just don't fall for sites like "quackwatch" which is nothing but a shill for the drug companies. They just want to take away your freedom to eat what you want, and manage your own health care. As if your own body doesn't belong to you.

The overall declining health of the U.S. population, including virtual epidemics of many chronic diseases, shows that the mainstream medicine, with the model of getting us all to be lifetime supporters of Big Pharma, is not working.

Or you could just learn something about how your body actually works, how to keep your immune system strong so you don't get sick. I'm over 50 and haven't had a serious cold in so long I really can't remember. Probably 20 years.

But I don't mean the mainstream "health" advice. The medical racket is severely biased. Probably most doctors mean well, but they have a serious unconscious paradigm problem. Be better to assume there are no drugs in existence, and never will be, then starting looking at the problem anew...

Life tries very hard to survive, and much of what is assumed to be "bad" (symptoms) are actually _information_. Pain means there is a problem. When the warning light starts blinking on your car dash, cutting the wire is not solving the problem. Likewise with most uses of pain killers or symptom treatments.

I could go on for hours, but NZ has some good people:
http://www.naturopath.org.nz/nature.html

2 generations having kids by 24 isn't unusual. Oh wait, you're over 24 and still a virgin. That would explain a lot...

Well, not all of us engineers are like that, but I certainly agree that a great many websites are illegible, either because of the colors or some background pattern.

Personally, I think it's just being completely self-centered and not even registering that other people exist. At least not actual real people outside their own imagination. It is the complete absence of a "user-centered" viewpoint.

If a person took the user's perspective for a couple of seconds, such problems would be obvious. (unless of course all the people on the project have the particular type of color-blindness such that it looks fine... though that still doesn't explain the horrid patterned backgrounds on many sites)

Only for those who are incapable of learning anything during those 20 years.

Did you know I'm psychic?Yep.. Wait... I'm getting something... yes.. yes,..

You are an entry level developer who resents more experienced people making more money than you.

Damn, I'm good!

Uh... declaring and initializing variables inside a while() statement is not compatible with "good old ANSI C." Can't have it both ways. Though it is 2010 now, maybe comments which work with C99 is okay now?

Better yet, just use C++. It's not a driver, or even a library, it's an app. Using proven STL libraries will clearly improve the code quality and security.

Actually, maybe it is C++, as if 's' is a string, then "s != send" indicates 's' is actually an instance of a string class, not a char pointer. (I didn't look at the full code, just the snippet posted)

Yes there is.

Yes, I have. Jedi mind tricks no longer work on me.

No, they don't.

I see your media is about as accurate about the USA as the US media is about the rest of the world.

You might want to do some personal research, including talking to real people in the areas you intend to visit. Yes, there are some areas in certain cities which are not safe, regardless of the presence of guns. A gang can beat you to death in any country, without using any guns. (though a friend carrying might be able to save you...)

But living in Seattle, I'm not concerned about guns. Violence, in certain areas after dark. Guns are not necessary for violence. People have been finding ways to kill and maim each other since the the first jawbone of an ass. If I was really worried I would pack a gun and keep the odds more even, but it's a lot better idea to just avoid conflict entirely.

What removing guns from the responsible adult does is merely to make the balance of power completely in favor of the government.

Hard to argue with our police tending toward the trigger happy, though they have some justification in that they may well be facing a real firearm.

I notice that even when shooting someone for carrying a table leg in a plastic bag the UK officers get off free. That "our police can do no wrong" attitude seems the same the world over...

On the other hand, the total number of shooting deaths from police in the US are something like one per day, in a country of over 300 million. (http://social.jrank.org/pages/1333/Law-Enforcement-Police-Shootings.html) It seems quite likely to me that one person out of more than 300 million might actually need to have deadly force used on them, and that the officers are truly facing imminent death themselves. (though I don't for a second believe that is always the case, or that police don't abuse their power, as they tend to do all over the world)

With our police it is quite likely that it is not a table leg, but a real shotgun... That might seem to argue for just getting rid of guns altogether, but we don't trust unlimited power in the hands of the few. History shows that has gone wrong many, many times.

A de-armed populace is a vulnerable populace, to a great many possible dangers, both from within and from without. You might be getting away with it now, but time will tell... The world may not always be as it is today, and someday you might wish a sizable portion of your populace could quickly get to firearms, and have the life long training in how to use them.