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Comment Let's think this through a minute (Score 1) 140

To everyone suggesting blasting the landing zone flat, have you considered what sort of scientific data we could recover from from a site that's been razed with Earth explosives? If this ice is enough to ruin a spacecraft, then anything capable of dealing with it on a scale needed for a safe landing is going to fling contaminating detritus for probably miles. So we could land, and... then what?
Australia

Aussie Company Planning To Use Drones For Textbook Delivery 178

First time accepted submitter Michael Harris writes "According to The Age, an Australian company plans to use autonomous quadropters to deliver text books to University students in Sydney. Apparently the drone will locate you via your smartphone's GPS, fly autonomously to your location, and drop the book into your hands."
Privacy

Grocery Store "Smart Shelves" Will Identify Customers, Show Targeted Ads 274

cagraham writes "Snack company Mondelez International (maker of Oreos, Trident, Cadbury eggs) will introduce so-called 'smart shelves' into store checkout aisles beginning 2015. The shelves will use Microsoft's Kinect software, in addition to other tech, to identify shoppers age and sex, and will then use that info to deliver demographically tailored advertisements. The shelves will be able to track engagement, monitor how long customer's watch each ad, and offer discounts if a customer is considering a purchase (weight sensors will tell the machine if you pick up a product). Mondelez says the software will only use and collect aggregate data, and will not record any video or photos."
Cellphones

Samsung Creates Phone With Curved Display 219

iONiUM writes "Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy Round phone with a curved 5.7" display. It comes with a hefty $1,000 USD price tag. This is a follow-up to the 55" curved TVs it began selling in June, and is most likely an intermediate form in the development of fold-able phones. Considering the recent LG announcement of mass OLED flexible screen production, it seems we are getting close to flexible phones. One question I wonder: will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens."

Comment Re: MS Tablet Strategy (Score 3, Insightful) 381

The problem is if they cede the home/consumer market, the average non-IT staff member will become familiar with something else from their personal use. Now as an IT manager or CIO, you can decide to either gravitate toward what's more mainstream (assuming software vendors fill in the necessities, which is typical), or increase training spending to keep end users on the legacy platform nobody uses at home anymore. You can't make that kind of organizational switch overnight, but eventually the IT staff will also migrate toward the new popular platform, and then staff expenses will go up (I'm often tempted to learn Cobol to soak up maintenance programming contracts). It's just not feasible to turn your back on mainstream consumers and expect to maintain growth in enterprise when talking about these kind of horizontal markets.

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