You mean struggling to build enough units of the previous version to keep it on shelves? (http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/55579-asus-eee-transformer-sold-out-on-best-buy)

It seems like the version has some problems but it also seems like ASUS acknowledged them and delayed the launch. Hopefully they will be fixed on the devices which reach consumers.

The article (and report) conclude that "24 percent of 16-74 year olds across the 27 countries in the European Union have never accessed the Internet". Meanwhile in the parts of the EU with the highest Internet use (such as in the Scandinavian countries) the rate of Internet access (ie people who actively use the Internet, not people who've used it only once) is in the 90%.

I would assume part of the reason for the statistic is that 16-74 is a pretty big age span. Particularly when it comes to new technology. It wouldn't surprise me if the "never used internet" population is almost entirely in the 50+ age bracket. Unfortunately the article, and report, doesn't give that information.

Because that's the point of the HAL: Hardware Abstraction Layer. To software running above the HAL everything looks like normal. But the HAL and the stuff underneath make sure that's the case.

Often the drivers will handle the nitty-gritty details of how to communicate with the hardware and the HAL will call the driver (and other systems) to fulfill the API defined by the common HAL interface.

I work with camera stuff, but other systems have similar behavior. So if you're playing a video file you want that to be routed to your super-fast hardware chip. But in order to use it you need the HAL to set it up properly (different chips behave in different ways) and then handle feedback to the UI and stuff like that.

I'd recommend anyone interested in complex computer systems to take a look inside Android. It's way more complex than you'd expect at first. But quite a lot of fun. :-)

I have found many problems in CM releases that would typically not have made it into a real manufacturers release. (Eg, on a my Desire HD I find that sometimes the "open application tray" button disappears every now and then.)

And manufacturers do have internal beta tests, that's why sometimes prototypes are found in bars and other places. :-)

It is quite hard to develop software on hardware that isn't finished with drivers and an OS that isn't finished. And to do it in typically very short time as well. (Not saying that customers should accept buggy phones though, that pisses off me as well when it happens.)

(And yes, I work as a mobile phone developer. But not at a company making phones.)

Fascinating that none of the articles mention that the dudes are virtual as well. And they don't use any guys in the example images either. (If you visit the HM website it's easy to find some obvious body-doubles for swimming trunks.)

Focusing on issues with body images is not necessarily a bad thing, but only focusing on women is a bit sexist IMHO. Kind of ironic considering that's the drum they are banging on.

There is a guide for Android X86 on VirtualBox on their wiki (http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto).

I've tried Gingerbread and Honeycomb before and they work reasonably well. (OpenGL isn't well implemented yet, so Honeycomb and likely ICS will have some performance problems.) I haven't tried to use them as emulator replacements though, not sure how much work it is to actually make it possible to get ADB working with Android X86 in VirtualBox.

Just make sure you disable "Enable absolute pointing device" in the VirtualBox motherboard settings to get the mouse to work.

Previously I've used the Eee PC build of Android to get it to work, I haven't tried getting the ICS port to work in VB yet (there isn't a Eee PC build of it yet).

One alternative use for this is to use it as a "simulator" for developing Android applications.

The emulator that is included in Android SDK really emulates ARM code (it's actually running QEMU with ARM v5 code). The problem with this is that it's rather slow, even on high end computers. Anything that runs opengl is extremely slow and not usable.

The Android X86 project makes it possible to run Android in eg VirtualBox. You can then test applications in a much better environment. (Well, currently OpenGL still doesn't work, but it's a work in progress.) Since this is actually running the full Android environment, but compiled for X86, it's possible to get pretty close to real Android behavior on the system.

So that's one nice benefit of the system. Otherwise I imagine that it could be useful to run Android on an old netbook which has problems running a full OS. (And to be frank, many netbooks with Atom seems to have this problem. At least mine does.)

There's an article on Wired on why this kraken "science" is complete bullshit and an indication of the sad state of scientific "reporting".

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense/

Good news everyone! (Actually, it is pretty good news.)

It seems like the Hobbit will be filmed in 48 FPS (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118035338) and IIRC Cameron has said that his next project will also be higher than 24 FPS. And any movie that isn't heavily relying on special effects should have a fairly easy time to go into 48+FPS. (For special effects heavy movies twice the frames will mean twice the work, at least to some extent.)

I think it will be interesting to see the fallout of these attempts. No doubts a lot of cinemaphiles will get upset. But they tend to be perpetually upset that things change. (3D! Digital! Surround sound! Color! Sound! Motion!)

This might be considered a slight spoiler, or just a hint of what to come..

In the confidential to the day of the moon they mentioned that the console room used by the silence is in fact the same set as in the lodger. (But more gritty.) So it's not impossible that there will be a callback to that in future episodes.