Nokia was doomed several years ago. They ridiculed Apple while they failed to streamline Symbian app development, while they failed to research and develop touch-screen mobiles, while they failed to build a proper app store that was easy to use, while they failed to build.

Making a deal with Microsoft was just an act of desperation. They were already bleeding profusely from the consequences of all their dumb-ass decisions made around 2005-2007 when mobile internet was beginning to take off. The Ovi store could have been launched in 2005-2006 with over-the-air app downloads. Had Nokia remained on the leading edge and focused on making their products better from a consumer-point-of-view, then Apple would have had a much harder job in invading the mobile phone market.

But Nokia was not focused. Apple and Google had them for lunch.

Amen.

And: Excellent developers require excellent leadership to perform well! Without excellent leadership (that understand what system development is, how to separate the wheat from the chaff and how to organize system development), the effort of developers will go to waste.

The magic happens only when excellent developers are managed well.

Jobs wasn't a very nice person. Not only do I understand peoples' dislike of the guy, I share it.

Oh please. Of course, I've never met Steve Jobs, but still: Sure he was a very demanding boss and unscrupulous strategist, but that would not automatically make him a bad person in all aspects of life (unless you consider moneymaking and bossing all there is to life)

Oh bullcrap. There are plenty of us slashdotters who use Apple, and we vary from pleased users to Apple fanatics.

Anyhow, you are completely missing the main point: However much you may or may not choose to dislike Steve Jobs, his company has always been pushing towards making computing grandma-friendly.

On the other hand, FOSS software sadly focuses too much on the feedback from the already-clued-in people. That way, we've created a separate reality in which we thrive - but only until we encounter that other reality. The dreaded user who just don't get it!

Automatic offsite backup services like Crashplan, Mozy, Carbonite etc ensures your data will survive both media failure, theft and fire. You may also choose to keep a local copy of your media, because downloading hundreds of gigs over the net takes a while. But: I'd first put my money into one of these providers, and if I felt I still have too much money then I'd consider a NAS/Time Capsule kinda solution as a supplement.

And never, ever, ever exclusively store data you care about on DVDs and external hard drives.

For the first time in history, our pictures and videos can live forever - completely without quality degradation. It's amazing. And it's disappointing how few people take opportunity of this.

(Of course, you should take care to double-check your new computer can play back whatever media formats you have used - and convert if necessary. )

That's actually quite interesting. If "tablets" are found/ruled to be a separate market from computers and phones, then maybe Apple can be ruled a monopolist and therefore be ordered to open up their product.

Hah. They'll be subject to evolution, so that'll only last for a while.

Signed,
Megatron

Adrenaline is not about stress. Adrenaline is more about panic.

But yes, your statement is correct: Stress is debilitating to the body. Being in a permanent state of stress means your body tries to put on weight, your state of mind is not easy-going like it when you're not stressed, your immune system is affected etc etc. (Also, there is good stress and bad stress. The stress you impose on yourself is not too harmful, which is why many highly driven people enjoy excellent health)

There really should be no problem

1. Performing a backup
2. Wiping the machine
3. Installing a clean OS
4. Updating the OS
5. Installing proper security software
6. Re-importing data and applications from backup, and have the security software handle any nasty stuff in what you're importing.

That there is a problem wiping a machine is a serious security issue. There are a myriad ways which different kinds of malware use to hide themselves and bounce back up after surviving a round of security scanning. The malware itself is continuously self-updating.

If I were to engineer a package system, all files within a package (program) would be checksummed, and the list of checksummed would be PKI-signed in order to prevent the malware from hiding its misdeeds by altering the checksums. Of course, this has been done several times in Linux-land. Microsoft has Windows 8 coming up. Let's hope they finally fix their design.

FW is indeed a niche product, primarily used for disks for Macs and upper-end audio hardware. Meanwhile, USB2 is used for pretty much everything. TB - while cool - does not seem poised to challenge USB3 which offers sufficient performance for most uses and back-compatibility with previous products. And there is no good reason why sjobs would not include USB3 - it's relatively inexpensive by now. Why not have both?