Satan was an investment banker, not a lawyer. Lawyers have their limits.

Enjoy the silence. I don't think you're going to get an answer here, for obvious reasons.

So much of this whole post is simply not true.

Look, a few proponents of AGW sceintists have falsified some data, that's true. Many opponents of AGW have falsified data as well-- I don't see you screaming about them.

The bottom line is that the Earth's temperature is going up every year, give or take, while its CO2 content goes up-- and CO2 is well known to retain heat within the atmosphere.

This isn't "innocent until proven guilty," folks. The anti-AGW folks have to make their case, too. They haven't. All they've done is try to muddy the water and nitpick. There's a good reason they haven't made a case-- the evidence that AGW exists is overwhelming. The specifics-- whether it will cause more hurricaines or snow, more precipitation or less, these things are being hotly contested, just like with any young scientific theory. But the overwhelming arc is that iAGW exists and that it ain't going anywhere.

Saw this a few days ago, never can tell what to believe.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10434099-17.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

I don't think you've read the article thoroughly. His first complaint is about the developer model and how it clashes with every other model out there, and how it makes porting really painful. He also complains about variable hardware. He complains about the weak enforcement of resource management. He complains about hardware variability.

These are all real complaints. He does throw in a couple tongue-in-cheek "complaints," but it's generally critical.

The touchscreen test was done by MOTO labs, not Motorola. Not affiliated with Motorola in anyway.

They don't seem to be crypto Apple-fanbois, though. For what it's worth, in the real world, I have a G1, easily the crappiest Android device out there. I have no detectable issues with the touchscreen. Doesn't shock me that Apple's tracks better, but as a fairly aggressive user of the G1, I just haven't come across a need for whatever accuracy is supposedly missing.

I think it's obvious that specific point was tongue-in-cheek.

His mix of legitimate gripes and tongue-in-cheek "criticism" makes the article a little tricky to parse-- but I learned some interesting stuff about Android.

Wow, the Apple fanbois are in full force today!!!

Yeah, I'm a Microsoft fanboy-- I have three systems running MacOSX-- a G4 PowerPC tower, a Mac Mini, and a hacked Dell Mini 10v running Snow Leopard.

But I also have 2 Windows PCs and a Linux box. Seriously, some of you Apple nuts need to lighten up.

And all this flamage because I said, "actually, MS has had one decent ad campaign in 10 years." If that's a booster, I don't know what to say to you.

The actual, obvious message of the ad campaign was not "our OS sucks" and no rational person would see it that way. What they'd see is that there's a gazillion PC laptops for under a grand.

The ad campaign also got an effective dig at one of Apple's advertising weaknesses, an appearance to come off more than a little smug.

You can rationalize all you want, but that's a reasonably effective ad.

And if you google "apple execs laptop hunter," you'll see a ton of angst from Apple execs and Apple fanbois alike.

Hell yeah I'd call that effective.

I think you make excellent points, and may actually be proven right-- but I happen to disagree with your conclusion that this is doomed to failure.

This thing is a netbook. Gramma can't even see a screen that small, much less aspire to getting frustrated because it won't install Quickbooks. Moreover, since it's a netbook, the vast majority of people will be using it as a secondary surfing/email device.

Sure, some cheapos will be dumb enough to try and use something with a 10.1 inch screen and a reduced size keyboard as their primary PC, but most people will be using it for web access while wandering around the house, or as a coffehouse/travel computer. For those purposes, it really should more than suffice as is.

I agree that subsidized devices have failed in similar segments before-- either failing outright, or struggling because people created simple hacks that removed the crippleware that subsidized the device.

However, the incentive is different here. I really don't expect google to deliver a crippled device. It's just not how they think. Android is a pretty efficient OS, I imagine Chrome OS will be materially similar. A year from now, most devices in this segment will be running Win7 on similarly spec'd computers. THAT'S crippleware. Unless you expect Apple to release a $300 netbook. :-)

This thing will be markedly superior to any similar product within phaser range. The vast majority of users will have far more incentive to leave the device as is.

I wonder how much google will have to subsidize the system anyway? You can already get a netbook with nearly these specs for under $300. By the time this thing comes out, I expect these specs will be pretty much mainstream, if not behind the curve (maybe not the 64g SSHD-- but the price of that should be far less next year).

I agree with you on the "where's the payoff for google?" front. I'm not sure I see google's play here, besides making the world more agnostic to OS's, which hurts google's primary enemies, Apple and MS.

For years I have been surprised by MS's inability to create a decent ad. Having been to a handful of MS conferences over the years, I have also noted that the warm-up videos are also first rate, so obviously there are people at MS who "get it" and can oversee the commission of decent advertising.

I was recently puzzled by Microsoft's "Laptop Hunter" ads, and really, MS's failure to push what was a really effective ad. They've been smarting for years for from the Mac-PC ads, and they've finally got something that hits the competition similarly below the belt (advertising press reported Apple execs were pissed). MS essentially completes the ad run and then shelves the campaign.

For whatever reason, MS's advertising mentality is just not aggressive and cutthroat.

I agree with your critique of the comment.

Cookies allow the website to trivially track user state. That's the real defense of cookies.

Granted, there are somewhat more onerous workarounds, but they are more nefarious. Would you rather have tracking done with cookies, which you can control-- or buried in GETs, hidden form fields, and obscured URL strings, which you can't?

Only one of those options is trivially controllable by the user-- and that's the only one this rules is messing with.

It's a stupid rule, clearly written with good intentions by people who don't understand WTF they're regulating.

The approach is completely backwards. They're hampering all uses of a given technology, when what they want to control is bad behavior. It's like banning/limiting hammers because a fair amount of people tend to buy hammers and then hit people over the head with them.

The legitimate hammer users get hampered. The head bashers buy mallets.

The correct solution to the absurd hammer example here is to make hitting people over the head illegal.

The correct approach to information collection abuse would be to make collecting information subject to regulation. As numerous people have already pointed out, you don't need cookies to track people and collect information-- the well-financed information industry can get around this dumb rule trivially.

Agreed. TiVo wouldn't pass the purity-or-death Richard Stallman no-compromises test, but let's face it-- the cable industry cheated TiVo by locking them out, using all sorts of non-competitive practices including subsidized PVRs, turning CableCard into a joke, etc.

TiVo is definitely doing something I don't love, but they are essentially fighting douchebaggery with douchebaggery.

Well wait no more. Merely pick up a copy of Win2k from 9 years ago. Or WinXP.

http://www.itsyourip.com/networking/how-to-add-multiple-ip-address-in-windows-2000xp2003/

In an ideal world, I would totally agree. The problem is that a lot of children have parents who do not give a flip about education and will not do diddly to motivate their children. The low-performing schools mentioned in this article are full of those kinds of kids.

What do you do then? Write these kids off because they lost the parent lottery? Mumble "ain't if awful" and cluck sadly when the cycle renews in a generation?

Keep in mind, these poorly raised children are going to be citizens one day-- and we're all going to be sharing a world with them. I wonder how the ones that make grades for pay all their life will adjust to meeting work goals for pay, versus the ones that flunk out or graduate with a 1.1 GPA?

I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to wager. ;-)

I agree this idea is philosophically disappointing-- all children SHOULD cherish education, blah, blah blah. But they don't. But I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.