Because the Surface Pro 3 costs even more than an iPad Air, though a Transformer Book or Nextbook is cheaper. And there are plenty of applications that are on iOS but not Windows, such as games and messaging applications. If the game you want to play is exclusive to iOS, or the family member with whom you wish to communicate uses a proprietary instant messaging application that is available only for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, then a Surface Pro isn't going to be the best choice.

True, Kindle Fire is a tablet running the Fire OS distribution of Android. But I think tlhIngan was contrasting tablets with the e-ink Kindle readers, which are more like the Nook Simple Touch.

Except some people don't have the PC. Instead of engaging in productive activities that work better on a PC, they do without. One user predicted that this would happen in five years, but it's happening now.

Even a 10" laptop like the "netbooks" that were in fashion from 2008 to 2012?

To complete this analogy, someone who can use a car most of the time and only occasionally needs to do these "tons of things" can rent a truck, such as a moving truck from U-Haul or a pickup truck from The Home Depot. Is there a comparable PC rental ecosystem?

Every year is the year of the Linux desktop. And none of them are.

Mapper chips were invented for Video Chess but weren't actually used in the final release, which was squeezed into 4096 bytes. (source)

Well, one of the flaws in X11 is how one receives remote screens to your X-server, and if people allow localhost to send screens to the session, then if someone compromises a local unprivileged account they could set up a fake lock screen on an admin's session so that when the admin enters his password they get the text he typed.

I see how this could be a problem, but given that desktop Linux isn't all that widespread I see bigger problems in arenas that are much more pressing.

My source states that a checkerboard has 64 squares, like a chessboard.

I certainly get the technical explanation. Given that I don't think Deskop Linux will EVER be mainstream, this seems like something we've lived with for an incredibly long time, and doesn't affect very many people or systems.

If someone wants to fix it, cool, but it's not really going to bother me very much if this behavior continues.

More security requires more diligence, which is often inconvenient. More security requires everyone to be secure, not just some, and that is definitely inconvenient, and requires trust that others are not putting you in danger (insecure), which requires compliance checks and verification, which is inconvenient. Technology can take the edge off the inconvenience, but isn't the panacea that everyone wants it to be.

The weakest link in security is people. Always has been, always will be.

Rumsfeld [said], "Stuff happens... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here."

This was in the context of the Iraq war, when the United States kicked over the anthill that was Saddam's government and suddenly all the factions started tearing each other and their civilization apart.

I do not normally agree with Donald Rumsfeld, and in the context of the Iraq war I definitely disagree with his decision to allow Iraq to destroy itself so thoroughly, but on the other hand if we're extending that freedom to people that we're actively in-confrontation with, then shouldn't we extend that freedom to ourselves?

Having just researched the market, battery life takes a back seat to at least a minimum level of durability. We passed on several tablets because they were just too flimsy for a frequent flyer.

I carry a Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga for work, and it's so useful that my wife bought one to be her next 5+ year portable computer.

We need the capabilities of a full-featured computer. I don't want a light machine, I want a full machine. I want to be able to type when I need to type without having to haul around disconnected third-party accessories that I may lose.

She wanted an e-book reader, a movie player, a word processor, a spreadsheet, and something that she could run Visio and ANSYS and Autocad on, so that she could telecommute. The only thing we wish that the Yoga had was a 4G WWAN interface.

To me most tablets are toys, not business machines. I want a business-capable machine.

Oh fuck that. I can plug my Nexus into my Windows machine, create folders, copy files, view any video format I want. Or I can have an iDevice, have to use the evil that is iTunes, convert to formats that Apple has decreed as sacred, and basically give up all control of the device. IOS devices are good for people who never want to go beyond the parameters Apple sets.

I think you would have a hard time figuring out what Occupy WASN'T protesting about. That's why the Tea Party has succeeded to some extent, and Occupy has failed. The Tea Party, by and large, set the parameters for what it was fighting, and stuck to them. Occupy was all over the map.

Can't speak for the iPad, because the only real interaction I had with one was a day with an iPad 2, which I found a bit heavy. Further, I really do dislike IOS and have since even abandoned my iPhone for a Nexus 5.

That all being said, I do use my Nexus 7 a lot. For me it is the perfect form factor. A 10" tablet is really too big, and my phone is on the smallish size. I pretty much do all my recreational reading, and a fairly large portion of my work-related reading on my Nexus 7, and it's small enough to be rather book-like in size, but large enough that it renders PDFs, ePubs and most web pages fairly well. I'm not going to get that readability out of a smartphone, and a 10" tablet or notebook is just too big.