Well, here this place used to get at least daily posts from Carmack or Bruce Perens, or people from the Antartica missions, for example. Also, always good posts from the usual users from that time like jafac, Millenium, BoredAtWork and others. What ruined this place lately are the ridiculous and stupid flame wars between Android/Google fans and Apple/iOS fans that drop comment quality to Yahoo or Youtube levels, with some Microsoft or Samsung fans or shills for good measure.

But then you stumble with posts like this:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3604217&cid=43334125

and patience gets rewarded.

But those were really good design decisions. Before the iPad we had ipaQ and PDA's, large and expensive x86 tablet computers and netbooks that had a really poor design. I saw netbooks with dual 9" or 10" screens to try to get a premium price and overcome the obvious design failures of using a no full screen application in such a small device. Others with resistive screen and stylus, but by running a OS not tailored to the constraints of a small screen, they all sucked despite having good specs.

  The "one app full screen" from iOS and notifications from Android provide the benefits of multitasking and a good design to modern iOS and Android devices.

My wife and my mom differ. It is a extremely nice, well thought and powerful product, it is a shame that in your country is so ridiculously overpriced.

I doubt they really believed that.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3577793&cid=43272025

The ones that purchased this are simply corrupt officers getting a cut from this purchases. The "scam" is only a red herring for the public to avoid prosecution.

This is corruption scheme. Plain and simple. The "scam" part is only a "get out of jail" card played by the ones involved in this corruption racket. In government you need to do a lot of paperwork to justify the purchase of USD$100 worth of USB sticks; to purchase this stuff at such price levels you need to be in a such level of institutionalized corruption that this should be a marker for corrupt government officers that this by far is the least bad crime they are doing, not only in the purchasing countries but also in the ones that allow the operation of the companies that sell this devices.

This scam has at least netted MX$350,000,000 for these bastards. The worst part is that one of the main culprits in this corruption scheme, the former chief of mexican Federal Police, Genaro García Luna is enjoying his impunity in USA while ordering the murder of reporters that have documented his corruption, meanwhile, this crappy devices have landed many innocent people in jail and $deity only knows how many innocents have been killed in Mexico and in the rest of the world. This is not only fraud, it is a well oiled corruption scheme. McCormick and his accomplices are of the few people that really deserve to be hanged in public.

At our datacenter, in the routine inspection of facilities we found a dead cat in the emergency power plant room. The poor thing managed to get inside the room and stayed under the warm engine block, but when a power failure triggered the power plant on it had his skin ripped off by the fan of the generator's diesel engine.

I think we fell for an obvious troll. But when we mix Google, Microsoft or Apple sanity goes out the window on Slashdot.

Best Regards.

A new iOS device have only 2-3Gb used by the OS and the built in apps. Those estimates that put it at 7 Gb or more are pulled from someone's ass.

Since Safari 2 or 3 that "Open safe files after downloading" as been the worst design decision by the Safari team. It is the first thing I disable when I do a new install of OS X.

Yes, that money could have better spent blowing up another hut filled with men, women and children in the Middle East.

I'm being sarcastic.

Please read TFA, the key part is:

If you know of another, cheaper way to know this I'm all ears.

When they entered in a revenue sharing scheme, they throw away any semblance of justice to the use of these devices. There is an strong incentive to miscalibrate the cameras and fine people that didn't did anything wrong. On principle I'm in favor of the use of technology in public security and transportation, but they need to be in an environment in that they are not considered a direct source of revenue, for the State or for a subcontracted private entity. The "revenue" from increased safety comes in a better standard of living for a given community, and the increase in common welfare by having less people hurt or killed in traffic accidents. The greedy bastards that signed this contract from both parties deserve to never hold again a public office or provide a service to the State for the rest of their lives.

You win the internets today!

Americans have no idea of how nice they have it. Despite the huge drawback of government and citizens resorting to violence at the drop of a hat, or the lack of a sane health care system, the USA are still a nice place to live, with many really nice people. Police abuse? Last week here in Mexico a bunch of policemen raped a girl and murdered her boyfriend. Evil Obama with his drone war targeting american citizens? Here in Mexico the army and security forces are responsible for at least 2,000 of innocent civilian deaths. Evil government taxes? Just wait until an organized gang of tugs replaces the government demanding their own taxes, err, protection. The strong government designed under liberal principles that served the majority of citizens coupled with its geographic position is what made USA a world power. All the people that decries that they pay taxes to uncle Sam while enjoying the benefits of western civilization will find thousands of people around the world willing to trade places with them.

I would post pictures of it if slashdot could handle images. I don't know why I was modded troll, the market for antivirus for Android is far more healthy than the one for iOS. Google reports about 125,000,000 pages for "Android antivirus" and 22,200,000 pages for "iOS antivirus". As you said, you will not get virus or malware if you follow certain rules; rules that Apple forces to be followed by most if not all of its customers. On the same vein, makes sense to lock down even more OS X like they did with Mountain Lion since the vast majority of PC users view it more like an appliance, not as a tool that they must learn to use. In this environment, it becomes the manufacturer's burden to not let users shoot themselves on the foot.

Best Regards.