Yes, this is still an Apple product, but I still have a Newton MessagePad. The Newton platform was released in the mid-80's and was somewhat of a failed experiment. I ain't no Apple fanboy, but I still think of the Newton as revolutionary, and some of the concepts used in its OS would make sense to take a look at these days, such as the handwriting recognition. But also, back in the 'early days' Microsoft did have a tablet device, that failed due to a combination of poor support and hardware limitations, similar to the Newton's demise. I see the success of the iPad as simply the first point in history where the hardware is powerful enough to compensate for poor development and code; couple this with better understanding of the hardware and better coding, and you have a device that finally works more than it fails. So what that there's no current true competitors? It's just a matter of time, we're just at the point where this technology is starting to really take off after a couple of previous aborted attempts. If the market requests tablet computing as the next 'big thing', we'll see more than just the Apple devices soon enough.

As a PUBLIC school providing this service to your students, and thus by extension to their parents, one can only wonder why such activity has managed to reach this point without the parents themselves coming to the school and giving you the same ideas and reasons that slashdot users here have. It's hard to believe that not a single parent has come forward with issues about this, so I'm left to conclude that some parents have and that you're either ignoring them or dismissing their claims. After all, public schools always know what's best for the students, or so they claim.

The 3DS has faced multiple big problems, including a lack of decent launch titles (Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D was delayed by MONTHS, but was originally supposed to be released at launch date), and poor release schedule by Nintendo of America. It's not really the marketing, it's the lack of support by Nintendo: there's currently no decent games, no incentive for third-party developers to create games, and the release schedule is very sparse. Imagine how much worse this will be when their flagship portable console has real competition, when the PS Vita is released.

The only constants are mathematical, not hypothetical. I think it varies based upon actual exposure and plausibility of the idea. For example, currently mobile phone technology is very visible to (most) people, so an idea that pertains to this will have greater exposure than would, say, some innovation in raising circus fleas. If only 1% of the mobile phone tech enthusiasts come across an absolutely brilliant concept, it's much more likely to spread and reach any greater percentile, but the same can't be said for the circus flea scientist.

Most audiophiles generally are not interested in low bitrate audio, regardless of the format - this especially applies to lossy formats such as AAC. 96kbps falls into this category, and both TFA and the associated forum thread on that website offers no insight as to why that bitrate was chosen, or why anybody should care. Since I'm left to draw my own conclusions, I think it's possible that as AAC is the default audio format for Apple devices, this might be of interest to a great many people. However, once again, no explanation is given. Being an audiophile myself, there's little advantage to encoding music in 96kbps AAC as disk space hasn't been an issue since the early part of the century: FLAC is used for the better listening experience.

I've got bad karma from 'questionable' comments. Yet crap like this article keep showing up on /. Too bad there's not a karma system for article posting, then I wouldn't feel so bad for speaking my mind!

The problem with this is that (at least here in the USA) "fair use" applies, so while your music was sampled by another artist, the blurry line between copyright and fair use is often very confusing and complex. This is especially the case when that artist who sampled your work is from outside of the USA, where such fair use rules may or may not apply, or when said artist has made a lot more money on their work that includes your sample than you did on the original work. But for all intents and purposes, the court system here in the USA will always follow the money.

The video says it's user-submitted. Even if it were created by Microsoft, they're not known to collaborate with anyone on anything. They make it a standard practice to buy out companies with good ideas, or like others have said, sue the pants off the competition that they can't buy out. Any possibility of a "Microsoft AND Linux" is just a fantasy.

Except, in a system of distributed cameras, it'll (sooner rather than later) be put under 'government' control, and a variety of different excuses given for such a move. This would inevitably mean police control of said system, and even requesting data off it would probably end you up on some list somewhere. I assume that's why the Brits are 100% A-OK with their nanny state surveillance systems. Better to live "free" and not make waves than always wonder when they're coming for you.

"You smell like black, tarry donkey poo!" (including the quotes) is both long, and easy to remember.

The saxophone background music in the video is meant to lull you into submission. At least, that's what happened to me.

Cgeys, you've made the same mistake others have done several times earlier.. This is still in beta, so stop yer whinin'!