Comment: MOD: That up. (Score 1) 247
Whoever moderated this "flame bait" needs their ass kicked. That was the funniest thing I've read all week.
Comment: Prophet of Retrospect (Score 2) 577
Actually, with every announcement you've been demonstrated to be wrong. Mac OS X isn't going anywhere. Apple has quite clearly been working very hard to bring some of the best ideas from iOS to the Mac OS X platform. They also introduced a nascent third platform, iCloud. If there was news of a platform's demise to be read between the lines at the WWDC 2011 keynote yesterday, it's more likely to be the demise of Windows as a consumer OS.
Comment: The way you see it (Score 1) 577
Since Apple currently offers you the choice of a tablet starting at $499 and laptops starting at $1199 (or something like that) and since the choice is already between a tablet iOS device with a subset of functionality, vs. a laptop or iMac with greater "professional" level functionality, then all you've done here is out yourself as a troll, or waste electrons on the internet. Which is it?
Comment: Digital Divide (Score 1) 568
If that scenario pans out (and the recent HP blathering about why they are not interested in Thunderbolt provides some evidence that it might) then you'll see Apple's share of the consumer market growing even faster over the next couple years, when Mac users are loading their iPad with movies to take on the plane in about 90 seconds, and HP users are spending a non trivial part of an hour to do the same.
Comment: Re:Firewire a replacement for SCSI? (Score 1) 568
FireWire was the replacement for SCSI, for connecting fast external drives to a Mac. (Mac computers at one time were all SCSI, internal and external connectors.) There's more about the relationship, at FireWire Wikipedia. My (fuzzy) recollection is that, at one time, one could even get adapter cables to allow FireWire ports on a Mac to connect a SCSI hard drive.
Comment: Thunderbolt (Score 1) 568
Of course, my next migration will be via Thunderbolt.
Comment: FireWire (Score 1) 568
FireWire isn't dead, yet. I use it to migrate from one Mac to another about once a year, and to connect hard drives. USB is sorta like gruel. You could eat it. But I've got whole modern cuisines, why would I give that up?
Comment: consumers and the tech geeks in their family (Score 1) 568
You haven't been paying attention. The "tech geeks" in the families of "non-tech savvy consumers" have been telling them for a few years now, "sell it on eBay and buy a Mac." Thunderbolt will do fine, even if only Mac users get to connect their iPad 3 or iPhone 5 to it and get Thunderbolt 10 Gbps transfer speeds. They won't care what all y'all are doing, and won't be interested in how long it takes you to sync your iPad. "You know how long it takes? Mine is so quick, I never thought about it."
Comment: the rise of home schooling (Score 1) 916
The decline of a commonly agreed objective reality (based on facts and logical reasoning) in United States at least, appears to be concurrent with the rising popularity of home schooling in the past 25 or 30 years. It's not clear that government is the problem. Certainly it doesn't appear to be the only problem.
Carriers Back Off On Mobile Payment Network->
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CWmike
CWmike writes "Isis, a consortium comprised of AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, is said to have decided to back off plans for a new, separate mobile payment network and will instead work within traditional systems that include major credit card processors such as Visa and MasterCard for mobile transactions, according to unnamed sources in a WSJ story. The carriers will still move ahead with a pilot test planned for 2012 in Salt Lake City of a system using near field communication (NFC) technology inside smartphones. Isis' change in direction is an acknowledgement that setting up a mobile payment system is much more challenging than putting NFC chips in smartphones and installing NFC reader terminals, at least in the U.S., analysts have said."
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Intel extends Moore's Law with new transistor->
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Gary W. Longsine
Gary W. Longsine writes "Taking a queue from 1950s era cars, Intel will add fins to otherwise flat transistors. Using the new process, Intel will build cooler running chips with a smaller process size, shipping next year (2012). Moore's Law will be granted a temporary stay of execution. Will they use it to build the next generation Apple A5 processor? Next up: sharks with laser beams."
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Kinect Controlled USB Rocket Launcher ->
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autospa
autospa writes "Kinect has led many hackers to do very innovative things and one such innovative hacker is Jonas Wagner. Jonas has managed to connect his Microsoft Kinect to a USB missile launcher, through which one can protect one’s territory by just waving hands!"
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How we will kiss in the future (video)->
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HansonMB
HansonMB writes "The days of touching your tongue to someone else’s tongue aren’t over just yet. But students at Japan’s Kajimoto Research Laboratory have them in their sights. They’ve created a device that lets people french kiss through the Internet: use your tongue to twirl a straw, and your partner will feel that straw move on the other end."
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Sony blaming Anonymous for PSN hack->
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H_Fisher
H_Fisher writes "In a letter to Congress, Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony's board of directors, blames hacker group Anonymous for making possible the theft of gamers' personal information. "What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes," Hirai wrote. He also indicated that Sony waited two days before notifying the FBI of the theft."
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Intel unveils "Tri-Gate" transistors->
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Barence
Barence writes "Intel has revealed a brand new type of transistor, which uses a three-dimensional design to operate in a smaller space and consume less power than existing designs.
The new transistors are called “Tri-Gate” units, in reference to their use of three conductive surfaces. The company claims they offer an overall 50% power saving over current planar transistors, or 37% faster performance with the same power draw. The first chips to use Tri-Gate technology will be Intel's forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs, the 22nm successors to Sandy Bridge that are expected to arrive at the end of 2011."
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The new transistors are called “Tri-Gate” units, in reference to their use of three conductive surfaces. The company claims they offer an overall 50% power saving over current planar transistors, or 37% faster performance with the same power draw. The first chips to use Tri-Gate technology will be Intel's forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs, the 22nm successors to Sandy Bridge that are expected to arrive at the end of 2011."
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