The Surface failure to me entirely comes from their dual marketing of the Pro and RT versions, which we all know was brutally confusing to the public due to the fact the interface was identical but one could run desktop apps and one could not. Most people could care less about ARM vs x86. They see Windows they want to be able to use Windows just like at home/work. Some say that's a reason people would avoid the Surface where to many I think it would have been a plus.

If MS had ditched RT and only released the Pro and sold it at a loss to meet that $500 price point, or a second less expensive version with an Atom/i3 type processor it would have made marketing simpler and more effective and more people i feel would have been on board. The face that RT came first means they blew through all their momentum on something nobody wanted. By the time the Pro came out (which besides the battery life is a great piece of hardware) it was too expensive and nobody cared.

MS tried to win on all fronts and ended up losing both.

The part I have never never quite gotten is why its so rare to fine IR transmitters in modern devices. This would ensure near total compatibility with all home AV gear. I know space is at a premium in these things but surely such a handy and simple thing would be worth it for the value add. The add ons i have seen are expensive or clunky, and thebbedt ones seem to be IOS based.

I am inclined to call bull on this idea as a whole. Unless I am underestimating the market for discrete components (and not just those who build their own PC's, but all the enthusiast makers as well such as iBuyPower, Maingear etc) otherwise the OEM motherboard makers should flip out about this. On Newegg right now I can find 15 variations of just Ivy Bridge processors from Intel in various configurations and prices. If I am Asus/MSI then I have to build a motherboard for each of those rather than one board that can support all of them?

I can see this being an option offered for the Dell/HP/Lenovo's of the world who are already accustomed to building machines with soldered chips and have the infrastructure to support it. I cannot think Intel is so clouded as to wipe off a hardcore section of their customer base, even if its a smaller amount of total sales.

As mis-planned as LightSquared's business plans seem, I do really hope they or someone with a similar idea succeeds soon. Competitors obtaining and lighting up spectrum for data seems like one of the few market based actions needed to really put a bit of pressure on Verizon/ATT and even local broadband providers. That combined with some hopeful new ideas for the FCC on how it doles out spectrum and we could see some increased capability in US broadband options.

Real estate in Manhattan is only getting more expensive, even in Chinatown and the youth culture (hipsters they may be) are in Brooklyn and they would love nothing better then to prop open their shiny MBP's next to a vintage Galaga machine, even if they were born 10 years after it was new...

Also I'm curious do they host any of the retro tournaments (ala King of Kong) at this location, a move to a larger facility might make that feasible and get some more attention to the place.

Overall the arcade of old is a hard business model to sustain in this day and age for obvious reasons, especially with some games costing $1 or more per credit. You need something unique to get people in and staying in.

From what I've read it's not fast enough to replace HDMI/Displayport and not as cheap to integrate as USB 3.0 (will Apple retain a royalty on the connector ala Firewire?) I do understand the need to have a universal, optical interconnect but I'm not so sure i want Apple being the one pushing it...

One would imagine that if we had figured such things out as cryostasis, interstellar transport, highly advanced cloning and mental transmission (especially that one) that we'd probably have made some advancements in astronomical observation as well. I was more bothered that with all that we couldn't get some metal out the ground without essentially using 20th century strip mining.

At this point in US space travel's history it seems like we're in a transition period. The old technology has finally caught up with itself and now without the Shuttle we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards. Rushing into a new manned programmed for what seems like no good reason other then to just do it will be a waste of money and take awy from developing tech. Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems. Any plan for a moon base would involve robot systems paving the away ahead before humans regardless so let's focus those funds long term rather then making a couple of special interests happy.

I was excited for this (and still) for a digital signage setup, being that to drive 6 individual screens at native res from a PC source was a challenge without real expensive gear (like an NVidia QuadroPlex), so at $500 this would be a bargain for certain setups, but without DisplayPort the card can only drive 2 screens video DVI/HDMI, anything else you need active (not a dongle like for the MBP since the card only has 2 DACs) DisplayPort to DVI adapters, which run at $99 each and are in terribly short supply thanks to this card. So if you want to use 6 screens without DisplayPort tack on another $400.

Who are fairly averse to risk and bold updates. Boeing was inching closer to something refreshing before 9/11 happened, and now even its "replacement" is riddled with delays.

With all these private rocket companies (SpaceX, Armadillo, Bigelow etc) why no venturing into the commerical airspace market? I would assume its too regulated and just impossible to compete with Boeing/Airbus/Tupolev and make a profit, even with a killer design.

As someone who has done a fair share of work in airports (digital signage) and has been badged in a couple of term, I can say this from observation and from talking to people in the airports and the TSA, the issue is not the passengers, it's the workers. The passengers are checked to ridiculous measures, but if you work at an airport your protocols are entirely different. All the tarmac entrances and any "employee only" entrance isn't guarded by the TSA, but rather independent security companies hired by the airports themselves, so every airports strictness at these points are anywhere from stricter or far more lax, especially if you're a regular employee that they recognize. I have had to throw gear into the back of an electricians truck many many a time and driven it onto the tarmac without them opening or even swabbing the boxes. At that point I am less then 30ft away from a 767.

All this extra effort at the checkpoints is to keep up what most people here already know what it is. The illusion of absolute safety in a system where it can never be guaranteed 100%.

Take it from us. This could end badly...

They've got the majority of America buying into the subsidy/contract system. The advantages of dropping $500 upfront on a phone aren't obvious to the layman phone buyer. Not when they get get an iPhone for $199 (despite the savings over time of going off contract).

People here know the advantages (and a few here probably bought the N1 from Google) but I think that mindset is going to be hard to change without a drastic drop in the initial cost of the hardware.

Having chips in people can serve a number of functions and conveniences in a somewhat modern age as we seem to be in. It would be handy and helpful in many ways besides the ones the researchers describe, but because of our governments and human nature itself, it's not worth the risk. With something like that it's not a matter of if it's abused, but simply how they'll abuse it.

Sort of yeah, but I think it's more an acknowledgement that "Crackers are smart dudes, and they wrote a piece of code that accomplishes an objective as good as anything we might write ourselves". Now whether you agree with that objective is another story.