The numbers are from IDC, so they might not be very accurate. According to IDC, Samsung sold 2,391,000 tablets worldwide in Q2 2012, but according to Samsung's court documents in the Apple case, it sold 37,000 tablets relevant to the court case. It could be that almost all of their sales were international and/or not-relevant (such as Windows tablets), but it is hard to reconcile those numbers nonetheless. The most likely explanation is that IDC really sucks at estimating tablet sales. Maybe they are dramatically better at phones?

Source: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/10/apple-sold-5-7-million-tablets-in-the-u-s-last-quarter-court-documents-show-samsung-sold-37000/

Even that would be a complete waste of money. After 9/11 passengers know that if the plane gets hijacked they will likely die. The passengers and crew will now prevent a hijacking just as a Marine would. The other easy to imagine threat is that someone tries to blow up the plane. In that case a Marine isn't going to be much help. We would be better off devoting the money to intelligence and investigation.

You can click a link at the bottom of the invite to stop receiving them. If it bothers you that much, this seems like a pretty "low cost" way of eliminating the problem.

In my opinion, the problem is price. If we stop trying to treat e-books as real books, then we shouldn't have to pay real book prices. I would be fine with either of these scenarios, but would probably prefer the second...

a) Keep trying to treat e-books as real books. Let people lend and re-sell them. Keep prices where they are now, usually somewhere between a hardcover and paperback.

b) Treat an e-book as a DRMed digital object. No lending or resale. Also recognize that it is nearly zero marginal cost to produce, and bring the price way down. Maybe somewhere around $1 per book.

Lotteries are for suckers if they have a negative expected payoff. You wouldn't be a sucker for taking a "heads you pay $1, tails you win $100" lottery. You've done nothing to argue that the app store has a negative expected payoff.

Care to elaborate? I find my iPhone very useful.

I don't really buy this argument as the sole explanation for Apple not supporting Flash on mobile devices. Mobile Safari supports enough of HTML 5 that you can re-create most of the flash apps that you suggest would eat into Apple's profit. There are a lot of iPhone specific web apps that give a lot of functionality. Sure, not as much as building a native app, but you won't get the same functionality as native apps with Flash either.

Not all of their keyboards have sucked. I still think the Apple Extended II is one of the best keyboards ever made. I have several backup keyboards squirreled away in case the one I'm using breaks.

I think it will be great for playing go. I can place stones on my iphone pretty well and a 9.7" screen can only be better. Plus my main problem with playing on the computer right now is that I don't want to sit at my desk for hours at a time. With the iPad it would be easy to get up and move about the house while I play.

I just wish KGS would open up the protocol and let third parties create clients. I may switch to IGS in order to play online with the iPad.

Also looking forward to a version of SmartGo for the iPad.

Lots of libraries for numerical work. Fortunately many of them are being ported to Python modules so you can get the speed/convenience advantage and work in a modern language at the same time.

3.3 GB really isn't that much. I would mainly use the Kindle DX for reading academic papers in PDF format. I have only recently started organizing them on my computer, and so far I'm over 700MB. That is only two semesters' worth.

An SDHC slot is really a no brainer on this device.

Zotero might be useful.

It is "Jobs's health," not "Jobs' health." I am amazed at how many publications have gotten this wrong.

I wonder if the Octopus's name is Grigori and has a penchant for attacking women on the beach?