Robots dehumanize war, but if war shifts away from human casualties, isn't this a good thing?
Will drones ever be cheaper than training a grunt?
According to the article: "However, phosphor powder is highly toxic and its price is expensive. As a result, Dr. Yen-Hsun Wu had the idea to discover a method that is less toxic to replace phosphor powder. This is a major motivation for him to engage in the research at the first place."
Is gold really cheaper than phosphor powder? Chemists care to chime in? Is it the powder part that increases the price?
I mostly agree with you: ownership should mean total control, so I should have total freedom to do whatever I want with my physical property.
The part where I disagree with you, I nevertheless actually agree in spirit: the DMCA is bullshit. It's bullshit because it prohibits too much. IIRC, it makes tinkering with devices illegal, and that's just ridiculous.
The part where I disagree with you is that I think reasonable copyright laws are good. What if I wrote some songs or something, someone else stole the music, and became rich and famous by claiming my stuff as their original? That's just plain wrong, so I think reasonable copyright has it's place.
Unfortunately, the DMCA is not reasonable copyright.
It's not exactly great, but it's not all THAT bad. After all, it comes with a webcam and USB ports. Either one of those minor features alone add a huge boost in use value (I'd love to videochat while chilling on my couch with someone, then bring the tablet over to the kitchen and prop it up while I do dishes and keep talking! and the value of even a single USB port is pretty much self-evident!). Having both of these features for less price than an iPad is not something you can honestly ignore or dismiss.
Basically, it's 2 different products from totally different origins entering the same space: both are entering the above-smartphone-yet-under-netbook space. Both iPad and Eee are both awesome in their own way.
tldr: competition = yay!
Nice article that made me very curious about one thing: why did the Newton fail? It seems like an amazingly useful and cutting-edge device that should have been snatched up by everybody.
Maybe it was just a little bit TOO new, so didn't fit well enough into people's existing workflows?
Remember to say hello to your bank teller.