Ok, I think you missed the point. New example. A truck drives over your lovely HTC One and leaves a crushed circuit board behind. SD cards are very hardy and likely to survive the assault. either way, chances of a part (SD card) of the phone surviving are much greater.

No idea what that is and no idea where or how to turn it off. That is half the problem with all the "customized" Android applications. Things get far too complicated.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S3. The damn thing only last a day and that means NOT using turn by turn navigation or 3D gaming. It would not make it through the day otherwise. For my holiday I purchased a dirt cheap battery with replacement back that more then doubles the battery capacity although it makes the phone twice as thick. I thought I'd use it only for the holiday but the fact I no longer need to turn the screen light to minimum and I can use whatever app I want made me continue to use this big battery. The thicker phone is easier to hold as well.

As for SD cards. As people that dropped their phone in the water how they recovered their data. It if is an SD card it can be dried and it will work. Build in memory required the rest of the phone circuitry to work in order to get the data off.

To me a closed phone (Fixed battery, fixed memory and customized (raped) android) is a lesser phone. My next phone will be from the Google Nexus line.

No doubt the processes discovered in the brains inner workings will be patented and I will no longer be allowed to think unless I pay a license fee.

Doesn't matter, if you are not sure you stay out of it or accept the risk.
The fun thing is that insiders feed off the naive mum and pop investors and when that stream dries up they miss out too.

If people make bad investments then only they should suffer the consequences.
If investments carried real risks then cooperation's would not grow large so fast either.
Just because it is inconvenient when a large business fails is no reason to prop it up because it creates MORE large cooperation's, not less until there is no diversity left and the entire economy is one large state owned collective. We all know how well that works.

Holly crap. You people scare me... Not only here but all over the internet are idiots that think that somehow they are entitled to tell private businesses what to do with their money and assets. This entire discussion should not even be had. If you don't like Apple to get big, stop buying their shit. Don't like Google collecting your data? Stop using Google. Do you want your local retailer to do better, buy there and pay twice the price of Walmart. But the moment you discuss what business owners should do with their property you are nothing more then a collectivist leach.

"Socialist revolutions, hang / jail the guys that destabilize the economy" You idiots. It is you with your insatiable hunger for stuff digging deeper into debt. It is you wanting ever more handouts that are destabilizing the economy. You demand your "gifts" from politicians in exchange for your votes and they gladly oblige by regulating those "gifts" out of private hands.

Why would anyone risk their capital to build a business when there is a risk of being jailed for being successful "destabilizing" the economy. You people deserve what you are now getting... No jobs, no wealth and eventually the lights go out. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Sjeesh!!! Grrrrrr.

I think anyone can lean how to use a bag of tricks. Learning a programming language, the syntax. Applying that bag of tricks to a given problem get's a lot harder but can be learned up to a point. Actually writing a commercial grade application takes pure skill and I am convinced it takes a certain mind to do it.

Although OO allows programmers to compartmentalise a given problem, someone still needs to keep all those objects in mind. It is well known that a good program is written in a short time. It certainly applies to how I work. In a rapid speed a range of classes are developed and this wondrous abstract model evolves in your mind that a programmer can see from all sides at once. I suppose it is a bit how chess masters can play chess in their minds (Although I really suck at chess)

If a project stretches over a longer period or if it is interrupted with different projects the quality suffers as it get's harder to keep the mental model pure and complete.

Apple has always been about exclusion which is the very reason I hate the company. No matter how shiny their products, their "Them and US" attitude leaves a foul taste.

Google is the exact opposite. They are very inclusive. Always competing by providing a better product. Apple fights back using litigation. If Google had the Apple attitude then they would not provide Google Maps for IOS, no GMail and no Youtube. They even run a youtube video format just to service Apple users. To top it all off, Google even stimulates the use of operating systems other then Windows among it's staff.

All Google needs to do is hang in there. Apple will soon enough implode onto its arrogant self.

Increasing intolerance to public cameras. No violence even has been documented plenty of times before. However, the contraption on this guys face looks more like a prosthesis rather then a camera. I bet that before the presentation of Google Glass that this guy was seen as an invalid of some sort and given the respect of not mentioning that device on his face.

But now people have all seen a similar device the penny drops and suddenly this guy is no longer an invalid but a peeping tom. Never mind that cameras are the size of a pin head and can be concealed absolutely everywhere.

Shopping in an electronics store I took a picture of a price tag so I could looking the model number online for reviews. I mean this is 2012. Why write the number down when you can take a picture. A sales rep reprimanded me for taking the picture. After I explained why I took it, he cooled down a lot. But there certainly was an over reaction as if I was walking out with the stores trade secrets.

I stand corrected on "In reality, the aircraft has been in the same spot for far too long." It indeed looks like it was moving leading up to getting stuck.
But even the article makes it clear is was hot but not extremely so. I suspect a combination of factors to be at work here least of which is global warming.

It is a matter of someone taking the next step. With today's tech you are right, but if card makers take the next step, 3d engines will follow.

I have always wondered why Nvidia or ATI are not in the 3D rendering engine business. I would think that they are best placed to get the most out of their hardware

Just about everyone that uses a multi screen setup uses 3 screens in order to avoid the bevel in the middle. Usually the left and right screens are angled inward as to for a viewing arc. That is actually not a bad idea. Especially if the angles are such that the optical axis of each screens intersect at the user viewing position.

BUT...

Eyefinity or Nvidia surround don't work that way. They simply fool the rendering engine in believing the aspect of the rendering context is much wider. The result is that the virtual camera in the game uses a wider angle lens (Not quite but it will do to make my point). This causes the edges of the left and right screen to look rather distorted. Adding more screens width wise is really not worthwhile.

What is needed is multiple 3D contexts like you can have in Microsoft Flight simulator where each camera looks at a slightly different heading. But, why bother to solve that at the game engine level. NVidia and ATI pay attention this tip is free!

It should be possible to build true multiscreen logic into graphics drivers. If NVidia can do stereo they ought to be able to render outputs at different angles. Not only that, each output should not even assume that the optical center is in the middle of the screen either. Enter head tracking logic.

I did lots of experiments with multiscreen and what it would take to have the ultimate multiscreen experience. I even wrote some demo software to prove the point in these old videos show that I made four years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBdtPz2V_vY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku76aHq3pps

(Sorry about the cheesy sound track)

And still we are stuck with dumb distorted multi monitor widescreens!

Do you use Dropbox, Google Drive or any of the other hundreds of file storing/sharing options out there?
My new Samsung Galaxy S3 phone even has a dropbox app build in that I can't even get rid off!

World temperatures increased by a fraction of a degree but here we go, now airports are melting because of it. What an idiot conclusion telling me a lot of the mental state of the author.

In reality, the aircraft has been in the same spot for far too long. Additionally the consistency of the tarmac material might be sub-standard causing the melting point to be lower. I have seen roads here in New Zealand that had substandard tarmac on them turning to liquid in the hot sun. And New Zealand average temperate is actually dropping over the last decade.