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Comment Re:Weird scaling -- Not. (Score 4, Insightful) 148

by Blahbooboo3 (#23587511) Attached to: First Reviews of the MSI Wind Ultra-Portable Laptop

I find it interesting that this laptop more or less falls right in between your standard fare laptop and an Eee PC in terms of portability and raw power, but is the most expensive of the crop.


Using the base Vostro 1500 for the "average laptop" and the Eee PC 8G we have:

  • Eee PC - 7" display, 800Mhz Celeron, 8G storage, 1GB RAM @ $549
  • Wind - 10" display, 1.6Ghz Atom, 80GB storage, 1GB RAM @ $649
  • Vostro 1500 - 15.4" display, 1.6Ghz C2D, 120GB storage, 2GB RAM @ $499


I realize the comparison is odd since they all hit different intended markets, but it seems that something that is between the two in specs would be closer to either of the two in terms of price than it currently is.

Compared to the Vostro you're paying for the size reduction. I bet that Vostro is one of those fugly and heavy cheap dells. At 6.33lbs, you can have that Vostro lead brick. UGH! Never again for travel would I use something that heavy. Once you go 3lbs for travel, you NEVER go back.

Compared to the EEE, you are paying for the larger 10" screen & faster processor.

All in all, it makes perfect sense to me the price placement from your list.
Communications

Submission + - Apple says 250,000 iPhones Sold to Unlockers 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Timothy D. Cook, Chief Operating Officer at Apple, disclosed during Apple's conference call to discuss their fourth quarter earnings that they estimate that 250,000 of the 1.4 Million iPhones that have been sold were bought by people intending to unlock the phone.

[The elasticity in demand with the price drop] enabled us to far surpass our expectation of hitting around a million units cumulatively by the end of the quarter. Some number of these were sold to people that have an intention to unlock and [while] we don't know precisely how many people are doing that, our current guess is there is probably 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold where people had bought them with the intention of doing that. Many of those happened after the price cut.
Apple knows how many iPhones have been sold and how many have been activated with ATT. The difference is the number that are unlocked."

Space Hotel to Open in 2012 137

Posted by Zonk from the l5-or-l4 dept.
blackdefiance writes "The New York Times is reporting that firm plans for the first hotel in space are now in the works. Slated for a 2012 opening, 'Galactic Suite' will cost about $4 million for a three-day stay. 'They may have solved the issue of how to take a shower in weightlessness -- the guests will enter a spa room in which bubbles of water will float around. When guests are not admiring the view from their portholes they will take part in scientific experiments on space travel. Galactic Suite began as a hobby for former aerospace engineer Claramunt, until a space enthusiast decided to make the science fiction fantasy a reality by fronting most of the $3 billion needed to build the hotel. An American company intent on colonizing Mars, which sees Galaxy Suite as a first step, has since come on board, and private investors from Japan, the United States and the United Arab Emirates are in talks.'"
Biotech

Humanity's Genetic Diversity on the Decline 285

Posted by CmdrTaco from the meanwhile-my-beer-gut-it-on-the-incline dept.
jd writes "In a study covering five different periods of history, from 300 AD to the present day, and geographically spread across much of Europe, scientists have extracted the mitochondrial DNA from a sizable number of individuals in an effort to examine changes in diversity. The results, published in the Royal Society journal is intriguing to say the least. 1700 years ago, three out of every four individuals belonged to a different haplotype. In modern Europe, the number is only one in three. The researchers blame a combination of plague, selection of dominant lineages and culturally-inflicted distortions. The researchers say more work needs to be done, but are unclear if this involves archaeology or experiments involving skewing the data in the local female population."
Microsoft

Submission + - $500 million dollar piracy ring busted in China

Submitted by Blahbooboo3
Blahbooboo3 writes: Reported by several news organizations, pirated software worth more than $500 million has been seized by authorities in China as part of a joint operation run by Chinese police and the FBI. Microsoft estimates that the software piracy of an international counterfeiting syndicate, over the past six years, cost the company at least $2 billion in lost software revenue. Microsoft said that key information in the investigation came from its Windows Genuine Advantage program, an antipiracy system that can check whether an OS is legit. It's generally accepted that Microsoft has done well out of software piracy: it helps products become widely used, and as the market matures, people start to pay for their software. And this has been a major factor in Windows beating Linux in China, as Bill Gates admits.
Announcements

Submission + - Smart Car Coming to a City (USA) Near You Jan 2008

Submitted by Blahbooboo3
Blahbooboo3 writes: Delays and missed promises, the smart car is finally coming to the USA in January 2008. Smart car uses a special designed crash cage to protect the driver and gets upwards of 40MPG. Crash test are very positive. The car is deceptively large inside, as showcased by this great ad from the smart usa web site. The 2nd gen Fortwo will be offered first, starting around $12000. The slick roadster unfortunately isn't coming soon.
Privacy

Submission + - Why web pirates can't be touched

Submitted by gwoodrow
gwoodrow writes: Forbes has a brief article about, essentially, the ultimate futility of fighting online pirates. From the article:

'Pirates don't just plunder. In Sweden, it seems, they also believe in sharing.

As the world's largest repository of BitTorrent files, ThePirateBay.org helps millions of users around the world share copyrighted movies, music and other files — without paying for them.

That's illegal, of course — at least it is in the U.S. But when Time Warner's (nyse: TWX — news — people ) Warner Bros. studio accused them of breaking U.S. copyright law in 2005, the pirates gleefully reminded the movie company that they didn't live in America, but rather in "the land of vikings, reindeer, Aurora Borealis and cute blond girls."'

Also touches on the many YouTube clones and AllofMP3.com. Nothing that most of us regular slashdotters haven't read/heard before, but a decent article nonetheless.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft is Sued for Patent Violation over .NET

Submitted by
randomErr
randomErr writes: "As reported by Info World Microsoft was issued a cease and desist order on February 7 of this year by Vertical Computer Systems. The order was for patent infringement by the current implementations of the .NET framework. Both the .NET framework and Vertical Computer Systems' SiteFlash use XML to create component-based structures that are used to build and operate web sites. Vertical Computer Systems is requesting a full jury trial. If successful fought .NET technology implementations may completely change as we know it and Microsoft would have to pay out a hefty sum."

Feed RIM's Excuse For BlackBerry Outage Finally Emerges (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
Research In Motion has delivered an explanation of what caused the BlackBerry outage earlier this week -- sort of. It says an insufficiently tested software upgrade set off a series of errors at its network operations center, which processes all the emails for BlackBerry devices in North America, and then its "failover process", which is supposed to switch things to a backup system, didn't work properly. The company says that it has plenty of capacity and resources to deal with its volume of messages and growing user base, and that it will better test its upgrades in the future. However, that explanation -- and the long time it took to come out -- doesn't wash with some observers, who say there are enough holes in the story that it doesn't add up. In particular, RIM's contention that it was upgrading its software on a Tuesday night, rather than over a weekend, has raised some red flags. Then, if a scheduled upgrade was behind the problem, shouldn't that have been immediately obvious to the company and news spread quickly by its PR team? The real damage from this episode won't be the outage itself, but rather the fallout from how RIM deals with it. On that front, things already aren't looking so good.
The Internet

Submission + - Text Messages Used To Monitor Elections

Submitted by
InternetVoting
InternetVoting writes: "The upcoming historic Nigerian elections are going to be defended by an army of observers not with guns but with text messages. From the article: "Anyone trying to rig or tamper with Saturday's presidential elections in Nigeria could be caught out by a team of volunteers armed with mobile phones.""

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