Before you complain about the Mini being a butchered Wii, just realize that Nintendo are not going after serious console buyers here or people flush with cash. Those people might have bought a Wii U or are waiting for the XBox One or PS 4. Nintendo is going after people looking for a bargain but who don't want a used machine (these people do exist). They are serving people who don't demand the latest and greatest from a console and who will pay $99 to play the awesome games you could get on Nintendo's old system. The thing Nintendo knows is that when it sells a console, it will sell games for that console. So a Wii Mini probably represents four or five games going out the door as first sales in the next year as well. And I am pretty sure nobody sells more titles for Nintendo consoles than Nintendo itself. This is a play to make some more money on the backend of the Wii's life. Its a smart move to trim the cost of the Wii and keep selling machines and the games that play on them. And some of these people might turn into Wii U buyers when they have more money.

Just look at RIM. Their platform is literally crashing and burning as you read this. Nokia's best play was to stick with Windows Phone and get bought by Microsoft. Sure they could have made Android phones, but its not like HTC and LG and Sony are moving product. Maybe Nokia could do better, but at least with Microsoft they had a partner to push help push through technical hurdles and to contribute to marketing.

You should totally create this. I hear AWS is the way to go to get things online quickly and at scale.

...was I the only one who thought "31 tablespoons of what now?"

And I think the subtle thing that Google realized and did absolutely right is that Glass isn't something that needs a new service contract from Verizon or AT&T or TMobile. Everyone in the market for Glass has a smartphone and probably high speed internet at home, so Glass is a peripheral to your smartphone when you are away from home. This is what the iPad should have been - a bluetooth peripheral to your iPhone. Tethering be damned!

A company that makes all its money on PC and Server operating systems and the business applications that run on them can't tell its shareholders it thinks PCs are dying. Microsoft would love to get into the tablet business, but they are so late to the game and they are finding not many people want a Windows tablet. That is their problem; Everything has to be Windows. Their best *ideas* right now are arguably Windows Phone 8, Skydrive, and Azure. What Surface needs to be is a $300 tablet that makes the experience of using the Windows ecosystem somehow better. Why that is really hard is that there are literally millions of iPad users finding that the iPad makes their experiences better. So much so that these people consider buying an Apple as their next computer. Microsoft needs to make a mobile experience so good it generates a Windows halo rather than trying to get the Windows behemoth to force users into a half baked Windows 8 'metro' UI parading as a mobile experience on their laptop/desktop.

I think a natural equilibrium will be reached. The only reason to manufacture things is for people to buy them. If nobody has money because nobody has a job, then they won't bother to make robots to manufacture things. At some point the 'haves' need the 'have nots' to have money. Filthy rich people don't continue to get filthy rich off of one another.

I upgraded my 4S as soon as 6.1 came out and had no problems... until yesterday when my phone seems to drain it's battery like charge is going out of style.

Doesn't matter if anyone got it or not. What matters is that 0.01% of slashdotters RTFA before they post. Like me just now. I sure didn't!

I think that people keep forgetting that Google Maps on the iPhone does turn-by-turn driving directions now. I think this is the #1 reason Apple put their maps on the iPhone. Google wasn't going to put turn by turn directions on the iPhone if they weren't prodded.

$200 scores you a 5x5 box with wireless, LAN, can fit a 2.5" drive, and has a dual core (sandy bridge?) intel processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173042

My new app was going to require you to do face time video chat over cellular while displaying flyover navigation to destinations that you tell siri. The icing on the cake was suppose to be when it created a panoramic image and saved it for you to read later. Upon looking at this useful chart, I realize doing this on iOS is just a bag of hurt. I'm abandoning Apple for Android. I'm downloading the Android SDK right now and I'll see you all on the Play Store where all these features just work on 1.3 million Gingerbread devices they are activating a day.

Reminds me of James P. Carse's book Finite and Infinite Games. It is an axiomatic and brilliant book. Not sure which one Lance Armstrong is is forced to play in anymore...

There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. ... A finite game is bounded temporally by time, space, participants, and outcome, and players must freely choose to play it. Also, players must have someone to play against. ... The rules of a finite game are the contractual terms by which the players can agree who has won. ... The agreement of the players to the applicable rules constitutes the ultimate validation of those rules.

contractual terms by which the players can agree who has won

Seems like if you win at something 7 times across 7 years and later they come along and say you didn't win 7 times, shouldn't they have figured out you were cheating after game 2 or maybe even 3?? Seems like people decided they wanted to change the rules for Lance Armstrong after he won. If you can't agree who won, what good is your game?

Its almost as if you'd want a system that only ran signed code...

I am not sure you can legislate your way out of this in the long run. So I don't know if the 'fight' needs to be an active thing. I mean, piracy aside, maybe Hollywood is doomed to fail because the new platform of games and tablets and phones and social networking and the internet makes it obsolete. Thing is, by the time this happens Hollywood will probably have figured it out and will have used their bankroll to buy the new system, too.