It's all backwards: they are all epic fails, except for the Rokr. The Rokr demonstrated that Apple could generate a ton of interest and press in the Cellphone space, that people wanted such a device, but that the existing operator/handset maker dynamic was so broken, it required a radical new approach. In effect, when Apple went to negotiate iPhone terms with the carriers, they could point to the ROKR, and say "we tried it your way".

Best of all, Apple got Motorola to license the tech from them.

So that's what Apple's going to "invent" next.

I happily used PLATO thirty years ago. The thing had a touch screen, but very few of the programs used it. Those that did I recall as being made for kids for whom it was assumed the keyboard-screen relationship would be too complex. Outside of those programs, touch screens just didn't make sense for desktop work. They still don't.

So, this brokerage was set up as a flag of convenience fifteen years ago and, to all appearances, operates as a loose federation of unchecked agents. One broker is charged with defrauded his clients, assigning all profitable trades to his wife, and all losses to the client. Another gets busted in a massive Ponzi scheme involving retirees and refinancing. Only when they're on the ropes does the SEC come looking at their IT operation, outsourced, from what I can see in the article, via an obvious conflict of interest to a "see-no-evil" boss and a pathological engineer. And the SEC only finds the very tip of the problem.

And that's the only time the SEC fined anyone for IT breeches of customer confidence.

Sleep well, America.

Yes, absolutely. Do these /. FPs help your stack racking?

Google+ and Gmail have had decades-long rollouts. New Mobile OS versions come out every 2 years. Well, make that a year for WP 7. Sorry to the idiots who bought that one.

Right choice or wrong, you have to wonder about a company putting out software so competitive, it kills the companies that make the hardware for it. So they have this dud, and they erect barriers to developers? Didn't The Great Chair-Thrower himself predict that the next breakthrough app will be on Windows Phone? Whom does he expect to develop that next breakthrough app?

Aye. Making the tube longer won't help muzzle velocity much if the propulsion system is magnetic instead of expanding gas. 100 m/s is 360 kph, or pretty damn low for a projectile. And this thing requires a bunch of Li-Ion batteries, and needs a recharge after 50 shots? So, in effect, it's cute toy, but the applications are going to be limited to situations where boring, smelly chemical fuels are simply not an option, but a heavy, electric beast is.

I'll liked this line:

“This is Lumia, and it’s time to switch,” she said, in what felt like a possible official tagline for the device.

Isn't that what Nokia owners have been saying for the last year already? You know. "Hmm... I think I'll go see what Symbian device or Maemo/MeeGo iteration Nokia has on offer. Oh. This is Lumia, and it's time to switch."

Yes, Nokia has great hardware. They've done that well. Now they're pulling the plug entirely on WP7 upgrades. So any developers or customers who took a chance on WP7 are being told "sorry, please buy(-in) again". Maybe some customers will; but I doubt any companies will fall for the MicroLighting Stranger.

I like gadgets as much as the next geek, but look: in the West, paper came into the classroom in the early fourteenth century. Sure, you see it earlier; but once it becomes available in bulk, its first use is class notes (also because the quality was not exactly archival). Paper replaced (wax) tablets. Why do you want to revert to a tablet?

Yeah, the new ones are super-cool, and they do a lot of things really well. But handling tachygraphy ain't one of them. Those photocopiers you remember from 8 years ago? Now they scan too. So drop the notes in the hopper, scan to PDF and load them on the tablet afterwards.

It turns out that it really helps to have a keyboard to make a post. Permit me now, with the aid of my trusty Model M, to unpack what I said above. The posting used the admittedly irritating expedient of using the title as part of the body (again, typing on a touchscreen blows). Therefore, the first sentence should read:

Don't forget the WIn 8 App store, which will be Microsoft's demonstration of how not to lock down a platform.
The point, then, is that "the whole metro apps thing" will be shooting themselves in the foot, going on MS's record in the field of app stores and product support. All you need to do is look at the magnificence of MSN Music, Plays for Sure(sic), Zune Marketplace, XBLA and the Windows Phone App stores. That's the direction the App store is going in. Legacy support is important to Windows, and one of the reasons for its success and differentiation in the marketplace (cf. OSX, aka "Firewire is so 2005!"), and is critical for its enterprise sales. Microsoft's famed legacy support does not extend towards its consumer-oriented stuff. Again, Microsoft Game Zone, Games for Windows, Games for Windows Live, Win XP's killing of non-USB HOTAS setups, Vista's problems playing audio, the list goes on.

So actually, I didn't say anything about Metro the UI (but if your UI sucks, don't expect to get many consumer sales). What I meant was that the Metro App Store, which is Microsoft's attempt to cash in on the iTunes/Google Play "locked down" app store phenomenon — and yes, like Google Play, MS is just trying to give itself a privileged position, a stamp of quality, with, no doubt, some unworkable DRM thrown in —, will be see sluggish sales, developers being exploited, until ultimately it is rebranded, cast off, and finally put out of service with no regard to the developers who tried to use the App store as their sales portal or the users who purchased apps there. You know, like every other time Microsoft has had an online store/DRM-scheme fail.

You know what they say, don't trust the Goog-lighting stranger from Redmond.

Which will be Microsoft's demonstration of how not to lock down a platform. Expect shifting requirements, app-breaking security updates, complete incompatibility with Win 9 and the endgame: MS screwing homebrewer, developer and gamer alike when they pull the plug on their ill-conceivef monstrosity.

Let's face it, there are three things keeping Microsoft's OS in business: the Office ecosystem, games and people who spent their whole lives learning one way of doing thing, and don't want to change. Everything else not only can be done better by someone else, but is being done better by someone else.

With every new OS release, Microsoft themselves screw the people who fear change. Office is still the cash cow, but between LibreOffice and the Googlighting Stranger, their desktop suite is only a few years ahead. I can't comment on Sharepoint and Exchange, so I'll concede they probably play a major role in many businesses, and that many of those same businesses have no interest in Windows 8 Metro. Finally, there's games. Games, and DirectX games, was the reason to buy Windows. Hell, it's the reason I run it. But, in the heavily politicized corporate environment of Microsoft, games have a problem, and that problem is spelled XBOX. So we get abominations like MS GameZone, Games For Windows Live and Games for Windows Marketplace, or whatever they're calling it now. The Xbox people can't have windows cannibalize their games. This is how Microsoft lost to Linux in the HTPC battle: an Xbox belongs in the living room, not a Windows Box. Things have gotten so bad, the other players in the industry have their own Microsoft-Free group to promote gaming.

So Valve brings on board a developer with demonstrated skills in making cross-platform gaming tools. If they were able to produce a set of tools that allowed games to be developed and easily ported between the various full flavors of Linux, Mac, PC and Android, worked on Chrome OS, and connected to the largest online game delivery platform in business, well, wouldn't that be cool?

Don't worry, they'll probably do something less ambitious and more profitable.

Ironically, this was the logic behind Elop's notorious Burning Platforms memo that justified junking Symbian, MeeGo, and any homegrown smartphone work (which as profitable) in favor of Windows Phone. "Adapt or Die" sounds good, but in this case it was used to adapt the bathwater for Microsoft's baby.

In truth, marginalia practicaly never make it into proper glosses. Glosses are usually assembled from authoritative texts that discuss the passage in question. And very few texts get the Gloss treatment: in the Latin world, it's the Bible, Corpus Iuris Civilis and Decretals above all. Some other texts might get glosses, but they rarely get a glossa ordinaria-class treatment.

And to the midrashim comment in TFA, I'd point out that Rashi did a bang-up job himself in Hebrew.

For the scholastic Middle Ages, criticism usually took the form of "one doctor says this ..., for these reasons. I disagree, rather saying this, for these reasons. To his reasons, I reply..."

Same as it ever was.

Lots of people have wanted to do space games. I've wanted to as well. A key part about doing such a thing with multiplayer (or even just the internet now) for me has been the use of computing. Folks have been building aimbots forever. What if the rules of the universe, and the ships, were only roughly (and/or inaccurately) described, and each player/ship had a limited amount of processing to figure them out and optimize the ship?

So I see Notch has a working 6502 emulator, and even a crude display system.

Boy, wouldn't that be cool if he actually built the game I've been longing to play? You know, he probably won't, but a sufficiently chaotic system with players coding things like navigation, weapons targeting, guidance, engine FADECs, that kinda stuff? As long as the failures are fun too, it'd kick ass.

The German-speaking Cantons all had majorities against the ban. The French-speaking cantons all had majorities [i]in favor[/i] of the ban. Swiss-Germans outnumber everybody else by a wide margin, so they won.

The argument for price-fixing is the same one behind the death of record stores. Remember record stores? Turns out there are a few hits out there that most people buy, and then those interested in music have wider interests, and therefore want a broader catalog to choose from. The record store business model is built on selling those hits and using some of that revenue to pay for the space to hold a broad selection and the expertise to guide customers. Even before the internet was making dents in music sales, the big labels were already running exclusive deals with Walmart and Target, sinking the record store business model. The same thing is going on with books: the competition to worry about isn't the internet; it's the big chains that can serve 80% of the market by distributing a handful of best-sellers, and screw the rest. And it's the publishers themselves, who cut deals with the big chains on their top sellers, and in so doing, contribute to killing off the market for their own books.

And yes, it's protectionism in the same way mandating broadband to rural areas is protectionism.