The iPod Touch starts at $199 and the iPad Mini is expected to start at $329.

Since this website has an excellent track record for nailing Apple's upcoming announcements, their pricing is likely much more accurate.

AC parent is correct.

One of the blogs with an inside source and a proven track record for nailing what is to come in recent Apple announcements, 9 to 5 Mac, has also come out and said the starting price will be $329.

Read for yourself.

Sadly, a $250 price point seems to be wishful thinking. Apple isn't going to pull a Google and sell things anywhere near break even.

Actually, the opposite is true. This was possible before RTM, but Microsoft has removed this ability in the final code.

CNET reports that users of the recently-leaked RTM builds of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 have discovered that one of the tweaks Microsoft has made since the launch of the last public test build, Windows 8 Release Preview, centers on the boot process. Microsoft is reportedly now blocking users from bypassing the boxy Start screen, preventing them from booting straight into Desktop mode.

Previous test builds allowed Windows 8 users to create a shortcut that switches to the Windows 8 desktop. If the user didn't want to boot their machine into the tiled desktop UI (formerly known as Metro), they could simply schedule this shortcut to be activated immediately after logging into the user's account.

Rafael Rivera, coauthor of the forthcoming Windows 8 Secrets, has reportedly verified with RTM downloaders that Microsoft's block of the boot bypass is indeed in place. He also believes that Microsoft has blocked the ability for administrators to use Group Policy to allow users to bypass the tiled startup screen. That said, it seems that Microsoft is trying to keep the desktop of old out of sight, hoping users will simply grow accustomed to the new blocky era of Windows.

The original patents on multi-touch belonged to a company founded back in 1998 called Fingerworks. Fingerworks produced multi-touch keyboards and gesture pads for the Macintosh.

Here is an article from 2002 discussing one of their products in the NY Times.

Apple purchased Fingerworks a year before Jeff Han's now famous TED talk.

Except for the fact that when you buy a flagship Nexus phone, there isn't any doubt at all that you will, at the very least, receive the next version of Android.

For people who buy Microsoft/Nokia's current flagship phone, the word on the street is that they are going to be screwed over, and Microsoft refuses to address the issue even when the big hitter tech journalists directly ask.

That's a big difference.

As a reminder, this is the same thing Microsoft did when they refused to provide upgrades to Win Phone 7 from devices that ran Windows Mobile 6.5. Even for devices which had the same basic specs at the Win Phone 7 devices.

Owners of HTC’s highly-praised HD2 touchscreen smartphone will be unable to upgrade the device to Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 software when the OS is released towards the end of the year. Despite the HD2 meeting many of the criteria laid down in Microsoft’s ‘Chassis 1’ spec – including a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, high-res capacitive touch display, 5 megapixel camera and 3.5mm headphone jack – the phone will be ruled out for the simple reason that it has five buttons instead of the three mandated for all Windows Phone 7 devices.

Source.

Here are links to some of the sources saying the same thing is going to happen to current Win Phone 7 device owners:

The Verge

Mary Jo Foley

Ars Technica

Since multiple industry journalists have stepped forward saying that current Windows Phones will not be eligible to receive an upgrade to Win Phone 8, it's difficult to think of current models as more than a scam.

The one Windows Phone evangelist who claimed the current devices would be upgradable, quickly walked those statements back.

Microsoft developer evangelist Nuno Silva apparently confused applications with devices when he claimed that users of Windows Phone 7 (aka Mango) would be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 (aka Apollo).

Offering a mea culpa on his blog today, Silva said he was trying to echo Microsoft's own statements that existing Windows Phone apps would run under Apollo. But for some reason he gave the impression that current devices themselves would also be able to run the next version of Windows Phone.

"I mistakenly confused app compatibility with phone updateability, which caused the rumors we saw yesterday," Silva wrote. "I did not intend to give the impression I was offering new guidance on any products under development or their upgradeability."

The developer aroused hopes among the Windows Phone faithful by leading them to believe that Mango devices would be eligible to receive the Apollo upgrade. But various sources have been insisting for a while that there is no upgrade path.

Source here .

If you buy one of these "beta test" phones, you will soon be stuck in a multi-year contract with a device that will not be upgradable to the current version of the OS. There is nothing beautiful about that. Do not buy before Win Phone 8 is released!

Anandtech reported hitting just over 1000MB/s when they tested a Promise Pegasus R6 RAID array of SSD's.

True, I just can't find a reason why I really need it.

There are SSD's shipping today that are already bottle-necked by the throughput challenged USB3 and SATA/eSATA standards. Companies like Intel have moved to building performance SSD's on PCI cards because PCI is the only available bus that is fast enough.

If you have a laptop, PCI cards aren't an option, but Thunderbolt delivers an external PCI bus.

I can't provide specific examples of theory-based conflict off the top of my head

Here is a good example of a recent scientific conflict over a new theory. A scientist steps forward with physical proof (electron microscope images) of a new class of solids and is hounded as some sort of religious heretic and fired from his University for daring to point out something that goes against official scientific dogma.

An Israeli scientist who suffered years of ridicule and even lost a research post for claiming to have found an entirely new class of solid material was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals.

Shechtman, 70, from Israel's Technion institute in Haifa, was working in the United States in 1982 when he observed atoms in a crystal he had made form a five-sided pattern that did not repeat itself, defying received wisdom that they must create repetitious patterns, like triangles, squares or hexagons.

"People just laughed at me," Shechtman recalled in an interview this year with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, noting how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening "crusade" against him, saying: "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."

After telling Shechtman to go back and read the textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for "bringing disgrace" on the team. "I felt rejected," Shechtman remembered.

Quoted article is here.

Is the data for this video delivered over TCP/IP? Then you can't claim it should be immune to the data cap any other data delivered to the customer over TCP/IP would be subject to.

Do they really think people are stupid enough to think that just because their servers for this data are on their own network, that this shouldn't be subject to the same rules as any other IP traffic? Either make everyone's video services immune to your data cap or none at all.

Anybody else remember how concerned and butthurt Thurrott was that some Macintosh applications used the brushed metal appearance four or so versions of MacOS ago? This window is a different color! The horror!

Now he's going off on a butthurt rant because people don't want to be forced to use a touch interface on devices that do not support touch?

Paid shills are hysterical.

The Fire arrives configured for Amazon One Click purchases, and the option to disable this does not work. Anyone who picks up your Fire will be able to order anything they like without any password, PIN, or other attempt to verify the purchase being made.

See here: Serious Security Flaw In The Kindle Fire

Teach the child social skills. Otherwise, stay out of his way.